Altiero Spinelli - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Altiero Spinelli was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

political theorist and a European federalist. Spinelli is referred to as one of the "Founding Fathers of the European Union" due to his co-authorship of the Ventotene Manifesto

Ventotene Manifesto

The Ventotene Manifesto is a political statement written by Altiero Spinelli and by Ernesto Rossi while they were prisoners on the Italian island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the Manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme...

, his founding role in the European federalist movement, his strong influence on the first few decades of post-World War II European integration

European integration

European integration is the process of industrial, political, legal, economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe...

and, later, his role in re-launching the integration process in the 1980s. By the time of his death, he had been a Member of the European Commission for six years, a Member of the European Parliament

Member of the European Parliament

A Member of the European Parliament is a person who has been elected to the European Parliament. The name of MEPs differ in different languages, with terms such as europarliamentarian or eurodeputy being common in Romance language-speaking areas.When the European Parliament was first established,...

for ten years right up until his death. The main building of the European Parliament

European Parliament

The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

is named after him.

Early life

Spinelli was born in Rome, and joined the Italian Communist Party

Italian Communist Party

The Italian Communist Party was a communist political party in Italy.The PCI was founded as Communist Party of Italy on 21 January 1921 in Livorno, by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party . Amadeo Bordiga and Antonio Gramsci led the split. Outlawed during the Fascist regime, the party played...

(PCI) at an early age in order to oppose the regime of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

's National Fascist Party

National Fascist Party

The National Fascist Party was an Italian political party, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of fascism...

. Following his entry into radical journalism, he was arrested in 1927 and spent ten years in prison and a further six in confinement. During the war he was interned on the island of Ventotene

Ventotene

Ventotene, in Roman times known as Pandataria or Pandateria from the Greek Pandoteira, is one of the Pontine Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of Gaeta right at the border between Lazio and Campania, Italy...

(in the Gulf of Gaeta

Gulf of Gaeta

The Gulf of Gaeta is a body of water on the west coast of Italy and part of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is bounded by Cape Circeo in the north, Ischia and the Gulf of Naples in the south, and the Pontine Islands in the west....

) along with some eight hundred other political opponents of the regime. During those years, he broke with the Italian Communist Party over Stalin's purges (resulting in him being ostracised by many of the other prisoners), but refused to compromise with the fascist regime, despite offers of early release.

Ventotene Manifesto

In June 1941, well before the outcome of the war was safely predictable, Spinelli and fellow prisoner Ernesto Rossi completed the Ventotene Manifesto

Ventotene Manifesto

, eventually entitled Per un’Europa libera e unita ("Toward a Free and United Europe"), which argued that, if the fight against the fascist powers was successful, it would be in vain if it merely led to the re-establishment of the old European system of sovereign nation-states in shifting alliances. This would inevitably lead to war again. The document called for the establishment of a European federation by the democratic powers after the war. Because of a need for secrecy and a lack of proper materials at the time, the Manifesto was written on cigarette papers, concealed in the false bottom of a tin box and smuggled to the mainland by Ursula Hirschmann

Ursula Hirschmann

Ursula Hirschmann was a German anti-fascist activist and an advocate of European federalism....

. It was then circulated through the Italian Resistance

Italian resistance movement

The Italian resistance is the umbrella term for the various partisan forces formed by pro-Allied Italians during World War II...

, and was later adopted as the programme of the Movimento Federalista Europeo, which Spinelli, Rossi and some 20 others established, as soon as they were able to leave their internment camp. The founding meeting was held in clandestinity in Milan on the 27/28 August 1943.

The Manifesto was widely circulated in other resistance movements towards the end of the war. Resistance leaders from several countries met clandestinely in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

in 1944, a meeting attended by Spinelli.

The Manifesto put forward proposals for creating a European federation of states, the primary aim of which was to tie European countries so closely together that they would no longer be able to go to war with one another. As in many European left-wing political circles, this sort of move towards federalist ideas was argued as a reaction to the destructive excesses of nationalism. The ideological underpinnings for a united Europe can thus be traced to the hostility of nationalism: "If a post war order is established in which each State retains its complete national sovereignty, the basis for a Third World War would still exist even after the Nazi attempt to establish the domination of the German race in Europe has been frustrated" (founding meeting of the MFE).

Federalist advocate

After the war, Spinelli, leading the federalist MFE, played a vanguard role in the early episodes of European integration, criticising the small steps approach and the dominance of intergovernmentalism, feeling even that the chance to unite Europe had been missed as sovereign states were re-established without any common bond other than the functionalist OEEC and the largely symbolic Council of Europe

Council of Europe

The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...

. Even the European Coal and Steel Community

European Coal and Steel Community

The European Coal and Steel Community was a six-nation international organisation serving to unify Western Europe during the Cold War and create the foundation for the modern-day developments of the European Union...

(ECSC) was felt to be too sectoral. The MFE believed governments alone would never relinquish their national power without popular pressure. They advocated a European constituent assembly to draft a European Constitution.

This approach eventually had a response from governments when they set up the "ad hoc assembly" of 1952–3. It was Spinelli who persuaded Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi

Alcide De Gasperi was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics...

to insist in the negotiation of the European Defence Community

European Defence Community

The European Defense Community was a plan proposed in 1950 by René Pleven, the French President of the Council , in response to the American call for the rearmament of West Germany...

(EDC) treaty on a provision for a parliamentary assembly to draw up plans for placing the EDC, the ECSC and any other development within a global constitutional framework to "replace the present provisional organization" with "a subsequent federal or confederal structure based on the principle of the separation of powers and having, in particular, a two-chamber system of representation". The Assembly was invited to submit its proposals within six months of its constitutive meeting following the entry into force of the EDC treaty. In fact, the Foreign Ministers, meeting three months after the signature of the EDC treaty, invited the ECSC Assembly immediately to draft a "treaty constituting a European Political Authority" without waiting for ratification of the EDC Treaty.

Spinelli played a significant role in advising the drafting of the Assembly's proposal for a European "Statute". However, the failure of France to ratify the EDC treaty meant it was all to no immediate avail. Some of its ideas, however, were taken up in subsequent events.

European politician

Following the crisis of the failure of the EDC, the "re-launch" under the Paul-Henri Spaak

Paul-Henri Spaak

Paul Henri Charles Spaak was a Belgian Socialist politician and statesman.-Early life:Paul-Henri Spaak was born on 25 January 1899 in Schaerbeek, Belgium, to a distinguished Belgian family. His grandfather, Paul Janson was an important member of the Liberal Party...

committee, which led to the 1958 EEC Treaty. Spinelli, recognising that the EEC institutions were the only real existing form of European integration, but still considering that they were insufficient and that they lacked a democratic legitimacy, embarked on a "long march through the institutions". In 1970, he was nominated by the Italian government to be a member of the European Commission

European Commission

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....

from 1970 to 1976, taking responsibility for industrial policy in order to develop European policies in new a new field.

Spinelli decided to run in the first direct elections to the European Parliament

European Parliament

in 1979. He did so as an independent candidate on the list of the Italian Communist Party, which by then had become a Eurocommunist

Eurocommunism

Eurocommunism was a trend in the 1970s and 1980s within various Western European communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy and less aligned to the influence or control of the Communist Party of the Soviet...

party and was keen to have prominent independent figures to stand on its list of candidates. He was elected and used the position to urge the first elected parliament to use its democratic legitimacy to propose a radical reform of the European Community, to transform it into a democratic European state.

To this end, he began to gather like-minded Members of the European Parliament

Member of the European Parliament

around him, taking care to involve Members from different political groups. An initial meeting at the "Crocodile" restaurant in Strasbourg set up the "Crocodile Club", which, once it was of sufficient size, tabled a motion for Parliament to set up a special committee (eventually established in January 1982 as the Committee on Institutional Affairs, with Spinelli as General Rapporteur) to draft a proposal for a new treaty on union.

The idea was that the European Parliament should act as a constituent assembly, although Spinelli was prepared to make compromises on the way to secure broad majorities behind the process. On 14 February 1984, the European Parliament adopted his report and approved the Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union. The decision was taken with 237 votes for and 31 against (43 abstentions).

Spinelli's project was soon buried by the governments of the member states. However, it provided an impetus for the negotiations which led to Single European Act

Single European Act

The Single European Act was the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Act set the European Community an objective of establishing a Single Market by 31 December 1992, and codified European Political Cooperation, the forerunner of the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy...

of 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty

Maastricht Treaty

The Maastricht Treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands. On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty...

of 1992. This happened with the help of several National parliaments, which adopted resolutions approving the Draft Treaty, and of French President François Mitterrand

François Mitterrand

François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...

who, following a meeting with Spinelli, came to the European Parliament to speak in favour of its approach, thereby reversing France's policy (since Charles De Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....

) of hostility to anything but an intergovernmental approach to Europe. This momentum was enough to obtain the support of a majority of national governments to trigger the treaty revision procedure.

Reception

Although the resultant treaties fell short of what Spinelli would have liked, his efforts did trigger a new momentum in European integration, including a major increase in the powers of the European Parliament within the EU system. In honour of his work, the largest building of the European Parliament complex in Brussels

Espace Léopold

The Espace Léopold or is the complex of parliament buildings in Brussels housing the European Parliament, a legislative chamber of the European Union ....

was named after him.

On 15 September 2010 under the name Spinelli Group

Spinelli Group

The Spinelli Group is a pro-European initiative that was founded with a view to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union , by creating a network of citizens, think tanks, NGOs, academics, writers and politicians who support the idea of a federal and united Europe...

an initiative was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Prominent supporters of the group are: Jacques Delors

Jacques Delors

Jacques Lucien Jean Delors is a French economist and politician, the eighth President of the European Commission and the first person to serve three terms in that office .-French Politics:...

, Joschka Fischer

Joschka Fischer

Joseph Martin "Joschka" Fischer is a German politician of the Alliance '90/The Greens. He served as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 1998 to 2005...

, Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a Franco-German politician, active in both countries. He was a student leader during the unrest of May 1968 in France and he was also known during that time as Dany le Rouge...

, Andrew Duff

Andrew Duff

Andrew Duff OBE is a Liberal Democrat politician, president of the Union of European Federalists, and a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England region of the UK....

, Elmar Brok

Elmar Brok

Elmar Brok is a German Member of the European Parliament and the former Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs. He was elected on the CDU ticket and sits with the European People's Party group...

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early life

Ventotene Manifesto

Federalist advocate

European politician

Reception

See also

External links