Altiero Spinelli - European Politician

European Politician

Following the crisis of the failure of the EDC, the "re-launch" under the Paul-Henri Spaak 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 from 1970 to 1976, taking responsibility for industrial policy in order to develop European policies in a new field.

Spinelli decided to run in the first direct elections to the 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 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 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 of 1986 and the Maastricht 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 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) 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.