When the newly-elected President of the Italian Republic made reference, on the island of Ventotene, to the birth of the European unification project,...

When the newly-elected President of the Italian Republic made reference, on the island of Ventotene, to the birth of the European unification project, many were probably wondering: how did that idea come about, how did it become the dominant idea of a continent, and how did it enter the lives of all of us in the form not only of a promise or a remorse for unaccomplished things, but also in the form of so many laws that nowadays have prevalence over national laws. There is to wonder why we insist in giving to that idea the name, noble but shaky, of a dream. Giorgio Napolitano vividly recalled what then, in the midst of a war between Europeans, seemed a fancy born in the minds of three anti-fascist confined men – Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, Eugenio Colorni. Indeed, so was considered what they envisaged: the birth of a Europe where there will never again be wars, and where a fundamental conviction regarding the nation-States will take roots. The nation-States had digged their own grave, by transforming their absolute State sovereignties into a mutual annihilation weapon, and finally into a selfannihilation one. As in a Greek tragedy, from sorrow and guilt a lesson was to come out, which will lead Europe to a new life. This was the catharsis proposed as a remedy in the Ventotene Manifesto.
To a close look, it was a quite special dream. It was more similar to a prophetic vision of a man looking for the unconfessed roots of his present time, and sketching on what he found the possible reality of tomorrow. It was supported by a very strong awareness of reality – which always imposes on one’s political aspirations the respect of the conditions of the real world – and hence by a deeply-rooted practical sense, based on the experience and the memory of countless European wars. If it continued to be defined as a dream or utopia, it is because the States wanted that that be the general consideration of it, necessary for safeguarding their absolute national sovereignties. But it was not so for the founders of the Community: Adenauer, Monnet, Schuman, De Gasperi had clear in their minds the tragic sequel of Europe’s history, and considered the Union to be essential in practice, not only desirable as an Utopia. But the guardians of nationalism did not cease for decades to fight it with convenient expedients. Since the beginning, their main weapon has been to define the European adventure as an illusion, talked of as a thing of the past, like other Utopias.
It would be worth reading again the papers that James Hamilton and John Jay wrote between the autumn of 1787 and the spring of 1788 in The Federalist under the pen-name of Publius, when there was to ratify the American Constitution approved by the Philadelphia Convention on September 17, 1787. In the sixth paper, Hamilton explains where the true illusions, the true “Utopian speculations”, lie. Who was cherishing them were not the federalists, but their opponents, who supported the inviolable sovereignty of the thirteen American states or, at the most, partial confederations. Hamilton is stern: they believe possible “a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood”. They share the unwise optimism of those who believe that a republican spirit is substantially peaceful (“There have been, if I may so express it, almost as many popular as royal wars”). Reading Publius helps us reveal the deception of an Utopia that usually wraps itself in the mantle of a pragmatic respectability: “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?”, Hamilton writes.
Also for today’s Europe that is true. Certainly those who see in the post-war founding principles something noble but no longer attracting are right: just because the Union partly exists already, it is not easy to contemplate new wars among Europeans. But that is not a reason for the European project to be seen as an Utopian desire, an old rhetoric for a world that does not exist. The threats from which the idea of Europe was born are still present, only their names and the challenges have changed: they are called globalized economy, terrorism, scarcity and political use of energy. Today like yesterday the individual States cannot face them alone, and their rulers know it even when they are reluctant to delegate sovereignty. If they could look into their own history, they would know that theirs is not even real sovereignty: it is a shadow what they are clinging to. It is an illusion, as described in Abbagnano’s Dictionary of Philosophy: “an erroneous appearance that does not cease when it is recognized as such (...) it is like seeing kinked a stick immersed in the water”. By delegating decision-making powers to Europe, the States can regain a sovereignty that they have lost today.
Therefore it is for a sense of reality that we have to make Europe and give it a capacity to govern, just like in the Forties and Fifties. It is for a practical spirit that it is urgent to have a Union ready to act even when there is not unanimous agreement, instead of a Union blocked by the right of veto. Once again it is the historical experience that demands this, as called for by a prophetic dream, founded however on rationality. Today it is the nation-State to be under an illusion, when it pretends to be non-vulnerable and even wraps itself in the mantle of real-politik and pragmatism. The democratic rhetoric itself is a conjuring exercise, that risks to hide reality. Of course it is essential that Europe be accepted by the peoples. But without an efficient government it makes no sense to put that necessity as a priority: without a government, Europe may well be more democratic, but absolutely without any weight.
This too is a valuable lesson that comes from the American federalists of 1700. The generous democratic bursts may turn into a “torrent of angry and malignant passions”; “an overscrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people” may turn into “mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good”, Publius says in The Federalist. The dangerous ambition is the one of those who “lurk behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people”, not of those who, taking the harder route, are concerned “for the firmness and efficiency of government” (Hamilton, Paper No. 1). Democracy, under certain conditions, may even become a deceit. The referendums on the adhesion of Turkey, promised in France and Austria, are in effect a way for expressing the right of veto by individual States over Europe’s future foreign policy. More than respected, the peoples are thus made instruments. A realistic dream of the Union is today the Constitution, and it is not by chance that it too is declared dead, as happens for Utopias condemned by reality. The two referenda in France and the Netherlands in May-June 2005 would have ditched the idea of a suitable European government, able to complement the national governments. Of course it is advisable to do something, waiting for France to elect a new Head of State in 2007; something pragmatic with the existing treaties, said the President of the Commission Barroso, proposing – in view of the European Summit on June 15 – a common security policy, domestic and against terrorism. But it will not be enough, as long as the decisional powers in Europe will not be made clearer, besides being shared, and only a Constitution can do that. If possible, a Constitution approved this time by all the peoples simultaneously.
This project too is not illusive, and who has already ratified the constitutional Treaty knows it. Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she does not intend to give up: the German people and many other countries have voted for the Constitution, therefore the project cannot be dumped by some nations with easy presumption. Fifteen States out of 25 have ratified it (soon they will be 16, with Finland) and this means that a majority wants the Constitution. Also a majority of citizens – about 250 millions out of 450 – wants it. Reviving the realistic dream means to start from here, from this Europe that has already expressed herself by a majority for a working European government and for a continent that shall have a greater weight in the globalized economy and in an effective international policy. It is necessary to take into account those who are unsatisfied and denounce the faults of the Union, but also those who strongly want to complete the Union and give it a Constitution. To go back would be not only illusory, it would be a betrayal and a breach of the agreements, because all the governments have committed themselves to bring the Treaty to ratification in two years, when they signed it on October 29, 2004. It is important that Italy has got again a government team that has supported this project and is willing to even improve on it (for example, by abolishing the paragraph of the Treaty that requires a unanimous vote for constitutional revisions): President Napolitano will continue on this matter the struggle of former President Ciampi, and others will join in, starting with Prime Minister Prodi, who proposed an even more advanced constitutional Treaty – the Penelope Project – when he was President of the Commission. At that point it will indeed be a very good thing to revive the realistic dreams and put an end to the utopian national illusions: illusions that do not cease even when they are acknowledged as such.