Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) founded the Movimento Federalista Europeo
(European Federalist Movement) on 27-28 August 1943 in Milan. He joined
the Italian Communist Party at a very early age. Arrested in 1927,
he spent ten years in prison and six in confinement. During his confinement
at Ventotene, he abandoned communism and embraced federalism. Along
with other colleagues, he drew up the Ventotene Manifesto in 1941.
Spinelli soon realised that the battle for the European federation
required the creation of anew type of political organisation, immune
to national fetishes and the limitations of traditional ideologies.
In the early fifties, the
campaigning of Spinelli and the MFE toward the Italian government
proved decisive in making the European constituent question the central
issue in the intergovernmental negotiations for the creation of the
European Defence Community (EDC), but its work was frustrated by France's
refusal to ratify the EDC in 1954. Despite this setback, between 1954
and 1960 Spinelli and the MFE re-launched the federalist struggle.
However, Spinelli quitted the MFE in the 60s.
From 1976 to 1986 he was
a member of the European Parliament, becoming President of its Institutional
Commission in 1984. From that post, he promoted the elaboration of
a Draft Treaty establishing the European Union. This project was aproved
of by a huge majority on 14 February 1984. This initiative was blocked
and shelved by the national governments, which in 1985 passed the
less ambitious Single European Act. However, it marked the entrance
of the European Parliament onto the European scene as a new political
actor in the process of democratising the Community's institutions.
Spinelli died in Rome on
23rd May 1986.
Juan Carlos Ocaña
History
of the European Union: Integration Process and European Citizenship
