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Federal Ideas in the European Community: Altiero Spinelli and ‘European Union’, 1981–84

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Michael Burgess
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Extract

DURING THE LAST DECADE ‘EUROPEAN UNION’ HAS BECOME something of a modern catchphrase in the European Community. In its simplest form it is a protean concept which serves as a convenient label for all those who advocate a more regulated and binding Community, though their conception may not necessarily be restricted to the present Community of Ten. ‘European Union’ first emerged at the Paris conference of heads of government in October 1972. There it was agreed that the Community's main objective was to transform, before the end of the decade, ‘the whole complex of the relations of Member States into a European Union’. The communiqué issued after the Paris meeting of the heads of government on 10 December 1974 reaffirmed this commitment and urged the Community of Nine to ‘agree as soon as possible on an overall concept of European Union’.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1984 , pp. 339 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1984

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References

1 Communiqué of the Paris Summit meeting of Heads of Government, 21 October 1972, Bulletin of the European Communities, part 11, 1972, pp. 9–71.

2 Communiqué issued after the Paris meeting of Heads of State, 10 December 1974, Bulletin of the European Communities, 12, 1974, pp. 7–12.

3 Tindemans Report, 29 December 1975, Memo from Belgium: ‘Views and Surveys’, 171, 1976, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Brussels; Spierenberg Report, Commission of the EC, Brussels, 24 September 1979; Report on European Institutions, Presented by the Committee of Three to the European Council, October 1979; Genscher-Colombo Initiative, December 1981, Bulletin of the European Communities, No. 11, Vol. 14, 1981, pp. 87–91.

4 The name derives from a somewhat expensive eating-house, the Crocodile Restaurant, in Strasbourg. It was there in July 1980 that nine MEPs from different political parties and of different nationalities met to discuss fresh proposals to reform and strengthen the Community.

5 Spinelli, A., The European Adventure: Tasks For The Enlarged Community, London, 1972, p. 16.Google Scholar

6 A. Spinelli, ibid., p. 186. In this text he also wrote of ‘individuals and movements… whose influence depends above all on the differing degrees of clarity with which they can analyse problems and find a solution and on their different and changeable methods of making themselves heard… their creative imagination is still the origin of every step forward’, p. 8.

7 Spinelli, A., ‘Towards European Union’, Sixth ‘Jean Monnet Conference’, 13 06 1983,Google Scholar Europe Documents, Agence Internationale, Brussels, pp. 1–9.

8 Spinelli, A., The European Adventure, p. 176.Google Scholar

9 Spinelli, A., ‘Towards European Union’, op. cit., p. 9.Google Scholar

10 Delzell, C. F., Mussolini’s Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance, New York, 1974, p. 190.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 191.

12 Delzell, C. F., ‘The European Federalist Movement in Italy: First Phase, 1918–1947’. Journal of Modern History, 32, 1960, p. 243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Lipgens, W., A History of European Integration, 1945–1947: The Formation of the European Unity Movement, Oxford, 1982, 1, p. 109.Google Scholar

14 See Delzell, , Mussolini’s Enemies, p. 192 Google Scholar and Lipgens, op. cit., p. 109.

15 This point has been underlined in Lipgens, W., ‘European Federation in the Political Thought of Resistance Movements during World War II’, Central European History, 1, 1968, pp. 5–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Delzell, C. F., Mussolini’s Enemies, p. 252.Google Scholar

17 Delzell, C. F., ‘The European Federalist Movement in Italy’, op. cit., p. 241.Google Scholar

18 Spinelli, A., ‘The Growth of the European Movement since World War II’, in Grove Haines, C. (ed.), European Integration, Baltimore, 1957, p. 37.Google Scholar

19 Delzell, C. F., ‘The European Federalist Movement in Italy’, op. cit., p. 244.Google Scholar

20 C. F. Delzell, ibid, p. 244.

21 Pinder, J., ‘Prophet Not Without Honour: Lothian and the Federal Idea’, The Round Table, 286, 04 1983, p. 217.Google Scholar

22 Federal Union was not founded in Great Britain until November 1938. Thus, having become acquainted with Einaudi’s federalist writings during 1937, Spinelli began to receive a steady flow of British federalist literature sometime during 1939 right up to the emergence of the Ventotene Manifesto in the autumn of 1941. Most of this information can be found in Spinelli’s own autobiographical account of his conversion to federal ideas, but in a recent interview in September 1983 Spinelli cited the following Federal Union activists as particularly influential on him: Lord Lothian, Lionel Robbins and Sir William Beveridge. For a detailed account of the Federal Union movement in Britain, see W. Lipgens, A History of European Integration, pp. 142–153.

23 Spinelli, A., II lungo monologo, Rome, Edizione dell’Ateneo, p. 135 Google Scholar, (Pinder’s own translation) in Pinder, ‘Prophet Not Without Honour’, op. cit., p. 217.

24 The importance of Catholic social theory to the continental European tradition of federalism is currently being investigated by K. R. Luther in his doctoral thesis entitled ‘Modern Federalism and Federation in Austria, Switzerland and West Germany: A Comparative Study’. For an example of this ‘organic’ expression of federalism, see M. D. Burgess and K. R. Luther, ‘Federalism From The Standpoint of the State Federated: The Case of Vorarlberg, Austria’, paper given at the annual conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), Aarhus University, Denmark, (March-April 1982), pp. 1–29. On the papal encyclicals, see Freemantle, A. (ed.), The Papal Encyclicals in their Historical Context, London, 1963.Google Scholar

25 Spinelli, A., ‘The Growth of the European Movement since World War II’, in Grove Haines, C., op. cit., pp. 38–40.Google Scholar

26 Interview with Spinelli in the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 15 September 1983.

27 A. Spinelli, The Eurocrats, pp. 11–17.

28 A. Spinelli, The European Adventure, preface, p. vii.

29 A. Spinelli, ibid., p. 186.