ALTIERO SPINELLI
His Life
Altiero Spinelli was born in Rome in 1907. When just seventeen he joined the
Italian Communist Party (PCI) and took part in the clandestine struggle against
the Fascists. Gramsci said of him; "he is a serious, mature and prudent young
man ". Considered dangerous by the Fascist police, he was arrested when only
twenty. He would spend 10 years in prison and six in political confinement in
Ventotene. In 1939 Spinelli abandoned communism, studied the wor
ks of
Anglo-Saxon Federalists, and switched to their creed. In Ventotene he had the
most important encounters of his life, with Ernesto Rossi, Eugenio Colorni and
Ursula Hirschmann, who would become his wife.
After the fall of Mussolini in 1943, Spinelli regained his freedom. In Milan, at the home of Mario Roller, he founded the European Federalist Movement, along with about 30 intellectuals. In the 1960s he would leave the movement, without, however, abandoning its ideas.
In 1970 he became a member of the executive commission of the EEC, and from 1976 to 1986 he sat in the European Parliament. His proposal to reform the Treaty of Rome dates from this year. The project, however, was not ratified.
Spinelli died in Rome on 23 May 1986. For 40 years he had led the Federalists, who formulated the most radical proposal; a European Federation and subsequently, with the end of sovereign states, a world federation. An unrealisable idea?
The three versions of European Unity
The push towards a politically and economically united Europe developed from the ashes of the political order destroyed by the war. Three versions of the ideal of European unity were elaborated; Confederate, Functional and Federal. The first envisaged that governments maintained control of organs, without a real ceding of sovereignty. The second claimed that economic integration would lead to political unification, but evaded the problem of the limitation of sovereignty. This question, instead, was central to the Federal idea,
which aimed at establishing a European Federation, with the limitation of national sovereignty. The national state would disappear and, at the end of the process, a Worldwide, and not just European, Federation would have arisen.
The Federal idea began to gain support in the European Resistance movement during the struggle against the Nazis and Fascists. Around a nucleus of French and Italian activists, the first centre for action and propaganda was formed, with a view to gaining attention for the idea of European unification in the political sphere. The animator of this group was Altiero Spinelli, who had adopted Federal views during his years of political confinement in Ventotene, during which time he wrote, together with Ernesto Rossi, the "MANIFESTO DI VENTOTENE", the document from which the European Federal Movement took its ideas. Its main inspiration was Luigi Einaudi, who opposed the principle of the absolute sovereignty of states. According to Spinelli, national sovereignty should be transferred to a higher political authority, this would require a Constituent European Assembly.
Immediately after the war, the Federal idea became widespread in European cultural and political worlds, but was not considered to be realisable in the short term. Furthermore, with the outbreak of the Cold War, Europe was split into two. From 1948 onwards, the Italian Federalists tried to spur the organisations supporting European unity to set up a Constituent European Assembly; with little success. At the Congress of Europeanism held in The Hague in 1948, their influence was limited. The Unionist current prevailed; this being based on the traditional diplomatic negotiation. This, in effect, led to the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949. The Federalists considered the operation to be without political consistency, given that every decision would be left in the hands of single governments. The European Assembly had a merely consultative function.
In the early 1950s the problem of German rearmament sprung up. Spinelli understood that the movement had to grab the opportunity to gain support for the idea of a Constituent European Assembly. In effect, some progress was made, with the formation of a so-called "Ad Hoc Assembly ", but the project soon collapsed because the governments had no intention to consider it seriously. In the second half of the 1950s the Federalists proposed the direct election of delegates, with a view to elaborating a Federal Constitution. However, it was precisely this recourse to popular action that revealed the difficulty in undertaking the concrete actuation of Spinelli’s ideals. Thus Federalism returned to the realm of Utopia.
Why has European Unity followed a path different to that indicated by the Federalists? In part this is due to the errors of the Federalists themselves. Their constitutional radicalism (the belief, that is, that European unity could only be the fruit of a written constitution and not the result of a long process of political and economic transformation) caused them bitter delusion. The movement believed it impossible to realise the community parting with economic cooperation in order to arrive at a subsequent political unity. Instead it was exactly this that came about. The first community, the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community), gradually gained responsibilities and powers. It expanded geographically, and became the true focus for common activity and for the construction of European unity. It should not be forgotten, however, that in 1979 one of Spinelli’s dreams was realised; the birth of the European Parliament, elected by citizens. Subsequently there was the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, and then the introduction of a single currency. These are important steps, but will there ever be a Europe - a world – such as that dreamt by Spinelli?
In July 1941 Spinelli and Rossi, confined on the island of Ventotene, wrote the Manifesto for a free and united Europe; a sort of ‘Bible’ for European Unity. The first idea, launched by Spinelli and inspired by a writing of Einauidi, emerged in the winter of 1940-41, whilst the continent was in the midst of war.
Spinelli and Rossi came from different backgrounds. The former was an ex-communist, whilst the latter has always been a liberal. To begin with they felt a reciprocal wariness, tempered, however, by a certain amount of respect. Spinelli thought of Rossi as a conservative and a nationalist. The two differed in almost every way. Ernest was slight and fragile in appearance. Altiero was robust, and able to turn his hand to manual work. Eventually they began to fraternise, overcoming differences and misunderstanding, and united by their non-conformism.
Their manifesto proposed:
- the definitive abolition of national and sovereign states;
- a new aim for politics: no longer the conquering of power in a national context, but rather the “creation of a solid international state" ;
- the creation of a Revolutionary Federalist Party which would have replaced the traditional parties.
At the time, the optimistic faith in the future, propagated with fervour by the compilers of the manifesto found few converts, but a little at a time the document gained favour in the clandestine network of the partisans. Nowadays it retains all its prophetic charge.