*Statement delivered by Jayne Stoyles on behalf of William R. Pace, Convenor of the NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court, at the Plenary during the Ninth Session of the Preparatory Commission, April 11, 2002.

Mr. Chairman, it is truly an honor to have the opportunity to speak here today on behalf of the more than 1000 NGOs worldwide that have been working under the umbrella of the NGO Coalition for the ICC since 1995 for the establishment of a fair, effective and independent International Criminal Court. What we witnessed this morning with the deposit of 10 additional ratifications that will start the process for the International Criminal Court to come into being, was a historic moment. Those who support justice and the rule of law all over the world are celebrating this event at this moment. As has been stated by governments, UN officials and NGOs, the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court will be the most significant achievement of international law since the founding of theUnited Nations itself.
The importance of achieving more than 60 ratifications of the Rome treaty less than four years after the adoption of the Rome Statute of the ICC in July 1998 cannot be overstated. Predictions were made that it would take decades before enough governments would make the political commitment and work through the complex legal issues to bring the treaty into force. Yet here we are, less than four years later, having achieved the 60 ratifications required by the Rome Statute. As has been stated this morning, this is a victory not just for advocates of the Court, but, much more importantly, it is a victory for the victims of the horrific crimes the Court will address. We acknowledge and pay tribute today to all those who have been victims of such crimes and who did not have the option of seeking justice. Today's momentous achievement can only be understood as a victory of the new diplomacy model of developing international law. It reflects one of the best examples of what can be achieved through cooperation between governments, international organizations and civil society. It must also be noted that this is an issue that has cut across all the usual alliances that prevail in the processes at the United Nations and that has obtained truly universal support, with ratifications now from every region of the world. There are of course countries that continue to have concerns about the Court. Our experience in working on this issue all over the world has been that as government officials and parliamentarians learn more about the Rome Statute and how the Court will work, their opposition softens or disappears. The ICC includes strong due process guarantees and very high standards of justice, reflecting input from all the major legal systems of the world. Often the opposition disappears in particular as officials come to understand that the Court will only step in when they are unable or unwilling to investigate a case against their own nationals. This principle, the complementarity principle, and the need for countries to implement their obligations under the Statute into their national laws, is in fact making a critical contribution to strengthening national legislation and the ability and willingness of countries to deal wit these crimes at the national level. It is not our view that the ICC will be a panacea that will result in the resolution of all conflicts and prevent the commission of all serious international crimes. Nevertheless, it is our view that its establishment will make an important contribution in the search for peace, the development of the rule of the law and democracy. It is a cornerstone of what is widely understood as an emerging system of international justice, which will no longer allow enormous violations of human
rights and humanitarian law to be committed with impunity. Much work lies ahead to ensure that the Court we are establishing is as fair, effective and independent as possible, that support for the Court is truly universal, and that countries implement their obligations under the Statute. We look forward to continuing to work closely with governments and international organizations in this process. As was said at the closing plenary in Rome, too much of history is the story of wars won and peace lost.Today, peace has won, and war has lost.

International law applied over individuals

On April 11, 2002 ten nations simultaneously deposited their instruments of ratification to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (RS) taking the number of nations ratifying the ICC treaty from 56 to 66 and triggering the entry into force of the new system of international criminal justice on July 1, 2002. In the address to the special ratification plenary at the UN, the World Federalist Movement, speaking on behalf of the NGO Coalition for the ICC, recalled our statement in Rome in 1998, that world history has almost always been the story of wars won and peace lost, but that the RS represented a historic achievement by the international community in which peace has won and war lost.
The World Federalist Movement (WFM) was founded to promote the vision of a world in which the global rule of law would replace the rule of violence, brute power and anarchy. The WFM worldwide peace movement was essentially alone in the 1945-52 period in recognizing that the great institutions established at the end of WWII were fundamentally flawed and democratically deficient.
The rush by most WWII victors to reoccupy their empires, the victors control in UN Charter, the victors justice of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, and the victors one-dollar-one-vote control of the Bretton Woods institutions all foreclosed the possibility of the UN being able to achieve its most fundamental purpose, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."
The fear of the world plunging into world war III wherein the use of atomic weapons would incinerate most of human life and civilization motivated the world federalists, like Emery Reves, Einstein, and Russell to call for world government and world peace through world law. International treaties and step by step disarmament efforts were proclaimed illusory because, they argued, the step by step forces that lead to war always proceed faster. They did not like it but they reluctantly argued that if it required an autocratic world government imposed by the USA and Russia, perhaps with the UK and France, to "outlaw" war then this was far preferable to the "better dead than Red" political-military mindset of the USA. They argued that it was better to establish world government and then fight to make it democratic, if that was necessary to avoid certain nuclear war. They had been through two terrible "world wars" in less than 30 years.
The Cold War descended upon the world, the disastrous efforts of WWII victors to reoccupy their empires turned into 45 years of wars of independence and decolonization, and the world federalists were almost marginalized out of existence by the Realpolitik of "mutual assured destruction." The dangerousness, recklessness and insanity of world politics in the Cold War may never be properly recorded.
It is wonderfully ironic that after 40 years wandering in the wilderness the first really focused and successful global project of the World Federalist Movement was to help organize and lead the effort to create a permanent International Criminal Court. It is a treaty, but it is a treaty establishing international law not only between nation states, but international law over individuals. States and UN officials are describing the ICC as the greatest advance in international law since the founding of the UN. The USA claims the Rome Statute is "supranational" and threatens to undermine both national sovereignty and the exclusive powers given to the UN Security Council in the Charter. It will be decades before we know the fate of the ICC, and years before historians will explain why this extraordinary effort succeeded, and why itproceeded so quickly, achieving 60 ratifications five to twenty-five years faster than almost all experts predicted in 1998. I believe historians will recognize that in addition to the much-heralded economic globalization sweeping the planet in the late 20th century, the globalization of democracy, justice and the rule of law was also extending throughout the world. Emery Reves made a powerful case in 1945 that unless the collision between industrialization and nationalism was vanquished by law there was no hope for the survival of civilization. Since WWII, the victimization of civilians in war has, incredibly, increased three-fold! The ICC represents not only a major step forward in the development of international democracy, it represents a major step forward in the goal to rid the world of the scourge of war.

Europe bears very serious responsibilities for the Middle East crisis. The degeneration of the peace process between Israel and Palestine is also due to the lack of a European foreign policy, in particular in the Mediterranean area. A divided and impotent Europe has let the process degenerate up to the present open-war situation, where two peoples are fighting with unbelievable violence, as if their survival depends exclusively on the enemy's annihilation.

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the European Union recognized the necessity of creating a Palestinian state, guaranteeing, at the same time, safe borders for Israel. But such good intentions were not followed up by actual facts.
The lack of a true European government capable of speaking with one voice to the world has prevented Europe from developing an effectual foreign policy. As long as each national government runs its own foreign policy, by definition there is no European foreign policy. Appointing a European High Representative for foreign and security policy is a fig leaf covering the scandal of the European power vacuum. There is more. Some European governments even complained about the lack of an effectual European policy in the Mediterranean. National governments have a very simple way to allow Europe to speak with one voice to the world and provide itself with the means necessary to operate: renounce the veto right, the last mockup of national sovereignty, in the Council of Foreign Ministers and grant all powers in foreign policy to the European Commission, so that it can operate as the true European government.

The European power vacuum in the Mediterranean is generating a dangerous illusion: that the United States can play the role of the deus ex-machina. The USA is supposed to have the will and the capacity to impose a peace plan on the two parties. This assumption does have some elements of truth. The USA is providing Israel with the financial and
military means necessary for its security. This is the reason why Europe is sheepishly waiting for the Americans to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as already happened with former Yugoslavia. But the situation in the Middle East is more complicated, because over there it is not just a matter of militarily toppling a regime -like Milosevic's- and then turn over the racked body of an unfortunate people to the relieving care of its wealthy neighbours. Former Yugoslavia was a turbulent country, but in prospect a possible candidate for entering the Union. A surgical operation solved the main problem, and now the convalescence has started.

The Middle East is a strategic region for the US world policy and for all the industrialized countries, because the USA, Europe and Japan depend on the Middle East oil. The political balance in the Middle East is an essential part of the world balance. In the framework of the American foreign policy the peace in the Middle East is considered an objective subordinate to the preservation of its world hegemony. World leadership has a cost. After the end of the cold war and after the September 11 attacks, the American foreign policy is based more and more on its technological and military primacy and on the new ideological perspectives that justify it. The crusade against the USSR as the empire of evil has been replaced by the one against international terror. Its commitment for building a new world order has been completely forgotten.

The American policy of maintaining the balance of power in the Middle East consisted in the past in interventions for controlling two possible dangers. On the one hand, it was a matter of blocking the attempts by the Arab-Islamic extremist front at "throwing back into the sea" the Israelis; this was done by entering into tighter alliances with the moderate Arab countries, like Egypt and Jordan, and by assuaging the ambitions of countries like Irak, Iran and Lybia. On the other, it was necessary to provide military aid to Israel, but at the same time to prevent it from attaining securitycounting only on military-type safety measures. In fact this policy, if pushed to its extreme consequences, would drive Israel to subjugate the Palestinian people, establishing some defacto form of protectorate. A peace within "safe" borders marked by barbed wire would be a short-lived illusion, because the Arab countries, even the moderate ones, could not accept a perpetual humiliation. That is why President Clinton's administration tried with every possible means to reach an acceptable compromise with the two parties.

After the September 11 attacks, the American foreign policy in the Middle East, notwithstanding President Bush's swift acknowledgment of the necessity of a Palestinian state in order to strengthen the worldwide anti-terror coalition, looks ever more oriented to pursue stability in the Middle East region by means of a military dominance over the Arab world, exercised directly by the US or indirectly by Israel. The American government has made it clear many times that its strategic priority is not the peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but the struggle against the axis of evil, of which Irak is supposed to be a clear representation. Richard Perle, number two at the Pentagon, said it very clearly: "An attack on Irak by us would not make much difference for the crisis in Israel; on the contrary, it would make a solution easier, because it would strengthen our influence in the Middle East" (Corriere della Sera, March 30, 2002). That is why Europe's initiatives for the recognition of a Palestinian state and for bringing peace are considered an obstacle or an inconvenience by both the USA and the Sharon government. A surgical operation in the Middle East, including the military eradication of terror, will solve only some particular problems. In the long run, only a peaceful coexistence, chosen by all concerned parties, is the appropriate remedy.

It must be acknowledged that US interests and Europe's interests in the Middle East do diverge. The US is worrying in the first place (and being the world super-power it has good reasons to do so) about maintaining the military balance in the region, which hinges on Israel's superiority over the Arab world. The European Union has a vital interest in a lasting peace in the Mediterranean, both for coping with the immigration and development problems by the adoption of efficient cooperation policies, and because the worsening of the peace process would soon propagate terrorism, hatred among religions and anti-semitism towards Europe.

Presently the European Union does not have the means necessary for intervening adequately in the Middle East. The federalists therefore are calling on the Union's governments to convene urgently a meeting of the European Council and to declare the State of Emergency, granting the European Commission all the military and budgetary powers for solving the crisis in the Middle East. They ask the European Parliament to support this proposal. The European Convention shall translate as soon as possible these contingent indications into precise constitutional norms.The European Union can provide its own innovative contribution to the problem of building peace. It has the possibility to offer a positive model of peaceful coexistence to the countries of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Europe,after WWII, has started a journey of unification of national peoples, once enemies, who decided to share a common destiny in peace. What has been possible in Europe for France and Germany must become possible in the Middle East for Israel and Palestine.

The Commission, which will act in this instance as a provisional European government, shall immediately call for an international conference where, beside the US and Russia, the representatives of Israel, Palestine and the Arab League are invited. The European peace plan must be based on the following points: the first concerns security; the second economic and political integration.

1. The immediate recognition of the Palestinian state by part of all of the participants to the conference, together with, at the same time, the assurance of safe borders to Israel. The Oslo accords failed because they started a peace process which, step after step, with a painstaking negotiation on partial aspects, should have led to the recognition of the Palestinian state. Insofar as Israel opposed this process, the response on the Palestinian side has been to resort to terror.
Every recrimination and moralism on this matter is unproductive. There have been mistakes on both sides. The problem now is how to build the future. Israel cannot deceive itself in believing that it can fight terror by keeping under military boots an entire people.Therefore the starting point of the peace plan must be the immediate creation of the Palestinian state. Instituting a democratic government legitimated to hold the monopoly of military force is the only way for eliminating the anarchic and terroristic militias. In addition, there is to face and solve other problems, such as the Israeli settlements in Palestine, the return of the refugees and Jerusalem's status. All these are issues that can be solved, provided that Israel is willing to give to the Palestinian state (which has the right to a surface equal to 100% of that inhabited by Palestinians before 1967) a part of its territory, in exchange of any part of Palestine that Israel deems necessary to annex for security reasons. The Palestinians in turn must accept to settle most of the refugees on Palestinian territory. The US, the European Union and Russia shall ensure, finally, Israel's security with a military pact and an interposition force, until the coexistence of all peoples in the region will be founded on mutual trust and common institutions.

2. The European Union, unlike the USA and Russia, has an interest in proposing to all of the Middle East countries (and not just to Palestine) a Marshall Plan for development and peace. This shall not be based only on economic aids, but shall also indicate specific political goals and clear development objectives. The major political goal shall consist in creating common institutions, not only for managing together - Israelis, Palestinians and Arab countries- the aids, but also for gradually strengthening democracy inside each country and, in prospect, fostering integration and political unification of the region. The richer Arab states shall share their natural and financial resources with the poorer ones. The development objectives consist in creating major infrastructures for the joint management of natural resources (in particular water) and in fostering the material and cultural interchange among the peoples of the region. Finally, the economic and political integration between the European Union and the Middle East must be promoted, also with the aim to program and regulate the migratory flows. In such a prospect, the European Union and the Arab countries have a mutual interest in settling oil payments in euro, so as to stabilize in the long term both the price of this resource, essential to Europeans, and the income of the producing countries.

Peace in the Middle East will be possible if the United States and the European Union will act together. The USA is obliged to prevent the breaking-down of the old post-war international order. But this conservative policy is not enough. Europe must begin to build the new order founded on peace, cooperation and international justice. If Europe will not assume upon itself its responsibilities in foreign policy, sooner or later the world will fall a prey to disorder and anarchy.

Reflections on how to unite the world in peace and liberty, prosperity and justice

1. Introduction
In the tragic crescendo of events which unfolded over a few weeks, Gothenburg, Genoa and New York have made evident to the absent-minded a sickness that we could define as follows: the contrast between the things which divide the world and those which unite it. United in terms of trade, of climatic and nuclear risk; divided by the disparities in living conditions, by the absence of instruments to reduce economic, political, religious conflicts. Uniting the world is the key question of a century, which will certainly not be short if we measure it by the time needed to achieve a lasting result.

We do not know exactly the remedy for this sickness; the path ahead of us is a research, not only an effort of realisation. "War is as old as mankind, whereas peace is a recent invention" wrote Henry Maine, an English jurist, in
the mid-19th century. And yet we are not at zeropoint, we do not lack essential references. Ignoring them would certainly mean condemning the world to ruin. The events of a few weeks ago have in fact reminded us that the forces of destruction are today seemingly more globalised than those of construction.

First of all: peace, liberty, prosperity, justice are truly universal goods. Not everyone was conscious of this, even a few years ago.They are universal not only because they are desired by all, which has always been the case, but also because now it is no longer possible to achieve them "in a single country". Human beings alive today, and even more so those who are yet to be born, are already united today by the fact of depending on each other for achieving those universal goods.

In the second place: mutual dependence makes the attainment of these goods a political question, i.e. concerning the art and science of governing. It demands the exercise of power, methods to assign and control it, rules, administration of justice, coercion. The etymology of the word "political" reminds us that mutual dependence, and with it politics, was born in the city (the Greek polis) and remained there for a long time. Today the city is the world.

2.The market is not enough
Of the three main areas of human activity - the economy, politics, culture - it is undoubtedly the economy which has more rapidly crossed national borders. The term "globalisation" indicates the emergence of a global market and of global finance. Supporters and opponents of globalisation in effect seem to share the same myth which, born out of the first industrial revolution, seems impervious to reason and to experience: the myth of the economy as the sole pillar of the social order. This myth makes the enemies of globalisation believe that the evil lies in the market-typical quest for profit (what they call capitalistic mode of production). It prevents its advocates from seeing that an economic system cannot replace a political order. The opponents recognise a state of sickness, but are wrong in their diagnosis. The supporters deny the illness. That the illness is not the failure of the market-based economic system is evident from the comparative experience of the countries which have, in various ways, tried to escape from poverty. The many areas where living standards are high are also those in which market principles have been applied, whereas the areas which have chosen central planning have worsened poverty and corruption from which they were already suffering. In the Soviet area, where all market forms were radically suppressed for a very long time, the economic disaster has been complete and continues beyond the end of the USSR. The longer and more persistent the anti-market experiment, the greater its failure. It is therefore a wrong diagnosis the one which interprets the difficulties of globalisation as the final consequence of the so-called contradictions of capitalism.

But from negating the evil, no less serious dangers may derive: the comforting illusion that growth can, like a purifying wind, sweep away all difficulties; the refusal to correct the distortions of the global market and finance; the inability to reform international cooperation; the claim that economy can solve political issues. When they negate the illness, the supporters of globalisation fuel hostility and rebellion more than their adversaries do.

The fact is that to create peace, liberty, prosperity, justice, the establishment of the market is a necessary condition but it is not enough. It is not enough for human society in the same way as it is not enough for a village or a state. Three arguments seem to support this thesis.

In the first place, in order for it to function, the market itself needs juridical, social, cultural, political and institutional bases. In the second place, even if it works optimally, the market does not produce all the goods needed by individuals and by society.
There are fundamental goods, such as security or peace, the environment or education, monetary stability or respect for contracts, which nobody can individually produce for himself or sell to others. In the third place, the economy is not everything: you don't live by bread alone, either individually or collectively. Peace, liberty, prosperity, justice are
necessary for an orderly development of economic life; they are values, human ideals, for which some are ready to sacrifice their own bread. Not only: they are conditions for something else. It becomes possible to deepen one's knowledge, to enjoy and produce the beautiful, to travel, cultivate friendship and culture, otium and contemplation.

3. Politics: the golden path
To refute the sufficiency of the market means that no remedy to the misdeeds of globalization will be appropriate if it does not bring significant progress towards a political order that is also global.

A mind set free to speculate beyond what appears realisable in a short time clearly identifies the golden path to be followed. It is the path which leads to a world government founded on the very same principles which political thought and the experience of centuries have elaborated for other and more confined human communities (cities, countries, continents): proclamation of the fundamental rights of the individual, government instruments capable of protecting them, subjection of those who exercise power to laws and control by the citizens.

After the two wars which stained the past century with blood, these thoughts finally inspired political action itself. Precisely because the conflicts had been worldwide, so was the system of peace and law that started to be built to prevent their repetition. The concept of "citizen of the world" passed from language to reality.

The League of Nations and the United Nations are the two institutions created to set in motion, following the era of the survival of the fittest, the era of peace and the rule of law among all nations. Today we note that the United Nations is not held in high esteem by the public, that it is often ridiculed for its powerlessness, and that it does not appear to be an ideal for which it is worth sacrificing oneself. And this is the case not only for the very many who inattentively look at world events, but also for the many who are driven by anguish, piety and longing for peace to demonstrate against globalisation, against the tyranny of the market, and for peace at any price. It is true that the number of wars fought in the world since 1945 is reckoned to be in the hundreds, and the number of dead is reckoned to be in the millions. It is true that the United Nations has not been able to prevent extermination in countries like the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Algeria. But it has missed the target not because the inspiring principle has been mistaken, but because its implementation has been inadequate.

However, the progress that has been achieved along the golden path, and the slow but important changes of traditional concepts and instruments are too often forgotten. In the military sector, the armed forces are no longer institutions merely functional to offensive or defensive war, but also to peace-keeping and peace-making, i.e. to separating warring parties, control of territory, prevention of wider conflicts. The United Nations has currently 16 operations of this kind running, involving some 30,000 soldiers.

Steps have been made since 1948 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights towards defining and protecting values common to humanity. The concept of "crimes against humanity" has been elaborated, crimes which must be accounted for not in the prejudiced environment of a given place and time, but in the universal environment of the human race and in perpetuity. In line with the same principle of criminal law, according to which society in its entirety is offended by the crime and therefore it has the right to judge and punish, it is agreed that in certain cases the offended society is the whole of humanity.

Faced with the extraordinary acceleration of economic interdependence, with the growing threats that only humanity in its entirety can avert (biosphere, terrorism, atomic proliferation), the steps taken along the golden path have certainly been significant, but indeed slow and incomplete. The instruments which today the UN and other international bodies have at their disposal are quite inadequate.

Such inadequacy has provided the impetus to look for alternative paths: improper forms of government, individual humanitarian commitment, protest. Improper forms of government are the hegemony by one country over the world, the balance of forces, agreements between nations. Today, these are even more difficult to practise than in the past, and even in the past they have never secured peace. It is not peace, but rather a truce, the temporary and precarious absence of open conflicts which has been established between one or more sovereign powers, each one having the interest or ambition to expand its action and to exercise its influence outside the territory in which it is sovereign. The path of humanitarian commitment is that of thousands of persons who, working for organisations or individually, have gone to Sarajevo or Afghanistan at times of great danger, are helping street children in Guatemala, are teaching at the University of Mozambique, are looking after the sick in India. They are seeds of courage, intelligence, professional skill that do not remain without fruit; but the fruit will not be a political order for the world.
Along the path of protest come together tens of thousands of young people moved by compassion, na•vely longing for peace, fearful of an overlarge world; but also highly sophisticated political militants who wish to revive the Marxist-Leninist myth; and finally rioters and hooligans trained in urban guerrilla warfare. The path of protest denounces the sickness, but does not heal it and may even exacerbate it.

Each one of these three paths may have its usefulness, but none is conclusive, and none can take the place of a tiring journey along the golden path.

4.Trying again and again
The condition of the world is therefore at the crossroads between a golden path, of which we know the goal and inspiring principle, but also its uncertainty and difficulty, and paths of the past, which we know to be insecure and ineffective, demonstrations of self-denial or protest which do not suffice to fill the void of government.

The golden path is rough first and foremost because travelling along it means limiting the sovereignty of states. In a constitutional order inspired by the political philosophies mentioned above, powers and rules would be established, certainly with the participation of all, which would be above national powers. It is in the very nature of a social contract that the contracting parties be bound, but to this principle is opposed the idea that a sovereign state does not recognise any power higher than itself; an idea still so rooted in the dominant culture that merely discussing it seems to seek to endanger the survival of the state. But even if one wanted to go down this rough path, it would be necessary to mark it out anew, finding an answer to difficult questions. Which powers to transfer from the state to a world government? How to ensure proper representation? Which instruments to confer on it? The principle of democracy is a single one, but it is achieved through different procedures and institutions for governing a village, a city, a nation-state, a continental federation, or the world. At each of the historical moments in which the social contract was extended (because the community of people who recognised themselves interdependent became broader) the institutions of government had to be reinvented in order to maintain the characteristics of efficacy, legitimacy, balance of powers, which civil thought and conscience judged indispensable.

In the construction of a world political order within which to pursue that part of peace, liberty, prosperity, justice (I say "part" because not all peace, liberty, etc. are dependent on the state of the world: there is one peace in the family and one in the city, a local and a universal justice) which is realisable only on a global scale, the path is steep. But we must know that we are not at zero-point.We sensed and turned onto that path almost a century ago. The same failures endured up to now have something to teach us.

What Altiero Spinelli said on the subject of European unity is valid for the creation of a world political order: the strength of an idea is revealed not by the fact that it imposes itself without friction at its first appearance, but from its capacity to be reborn out of defeat. If an idea contains in itself what I call the beginning of the solution to a question that torments humanity, to that idea people will come back, trying again and again. The failings of repeated attempts will not succeed in erasing it from people's mind and will.

5.Multiculturalism and common culture
At a certain moment in the history of the West the word "union" was used to define a political order. At first, there was personal union of various territories under one crown (in Spain, in the British Isles), then a union of the people located in adjacent provinces (in the Netherlands).

In those times a unity, which was not only political but also cultural, was recognised, or was attempted to be put in place. That culture developed predominantly in the religious sphere, contrary to what happened in the Roman empire, which however abandoned syncretism and practised persecution when it felt itself threatened by Christianity. Only in the modern age and in the states with a Christian tradition did the separation between political and religious powers mature, and with it the emancipation of culture from political power.

We have to ask ourselves if a worldwide political union without any matching point in the field of culture is possible. The answer is no, it is not possible. Just as a production or trading system requires, for its own global functioning, rules and powers which govern it, i.e. one global policy, a global policy in turn presupposes that some of its founding principles are universally shared, consequently a matching point in culture. The social contract of the world can be written in more than one way; but whatever the wording may be, the ideas and the culture that inspire it must be shared by the contracting parties.

Today we see that precisely on the issue of keeping separate culture and politics, religious and political power, the world is divided so sharply as to make blood be shed and to threaten the security of all. In Afghanistan, eight aid workers (doctors devoted to humanitarian aid) risked being condemned to death because they were found with a Bible in Arabic and with crucifixes. The crime is called "proselytising". What are the true contours of such a crime? Would respecting the liberty of others consist of saying nothing to them about our truth? Or would not such silence be a lack of respect? Commenting on the case, the Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Muttawakil, said: "We believe ourselves to be serving human rights but there is a small difference of definition.We believe in rights according to Islam, and if someone tries to impose his definition he makes a bad mistake, because this is not the world of a single culture or of a single religion".

I have spoken about a matching point in the cultural sphere, not about a common culture. Just as not all the economy is global, in the same way not all politics and all culture can or must be unitary for there to be peace in the world. If it is true that a global political order is not possible without a minimum shared belief in fundamental matters of political philosophy and law, it is also true that the world is and will remain multicultural. That order cannot and must not aim to block the processes of mutual influence, osmosis, contamination that mark history and often connote its highest points. It must prevent forced conversions, not free conversions; it must prevent the suppression of local languages, not their slow decline into disuse; it must prevent the oppression by the strongest, not the support to a better solution.

The rules of how to live together that the West has slowly improved upon, often by way of fatal errors, are imperfect and demand vigilant application; but they are the same as those for which Mandela, Sacharov and Gandhi have endured imprisonment, for which Chinese students died in Tienanmen Square, the boat people have fled from Vietnam, Iranian and Algerian women have been stoned. They are not "European" values or, as it was once said, "bourgeois", as opposed to "Asian", "socialist", or "Islamic" values: they are values without an adjective.

6. Entering into history
The bursting of historic tragedy into an individual's life is an experience which almost every human being undergoes at least once in the course of his life, and leaves him permanently marked. It is, usually, experience of war. This experience transforms our lives, makes us see death as an event that concerns not only the circle of our own loved ones, poses new questions: if history invades our life, what must we do in history, how can we, in our own small way,
enter into history.

For many of those who live in prosperous, democratic countries, the images of the attack on the Twin Towers have been and remain the dramatic realisation that our house, school, office are not protected from destruction. Vietnam, Iran, Kuwait, Kosovo, Chechnya were distant names. Some weeks ago, unexpectedly, the war, televised so many times from those countries, ceased to be something of remote places and times. Now that war has become a nearby reality, the difficulty and the price of peace present themselves in a new light. In a comparable but opposite way, the war cried out for in squares in 1914, especially by the young, turned out to be, in the space of a few weeks, not a romantic adventure but a terrible massacre. Even a peaceful existence, as we have seen in New York, can unexpectedly become a terrible massacre. It is now understood that the peace enjoyed for decades in Europe is not the fruit of pacifism, it is felt that the grandfathers and great-grandfathers who enlisted in the two world wars at the same age as those who are students today did not love peace any less than their grandchildren do.

And yet it is true that peace is not made either through violence or non-violence. If we want to improve on the modern invention of peace, action must be taken to prevent war, not to evade those wars already being waged.We must take action in politics, not only in the voluntary service. We cannot wait for the regeneration of minds to be completed: the world of peaceloving people will never come if, in the meantime, the violent ones conquer it. Neither can it be hoped that the humanitarian commitment may look after not only the sick and poor, but also fanatics and terrorists. It is not possible to aim at a uniform culture: a minimal matching point must suffice to draw up a global social contract.

To build peace it is necessary to spare no efforts in the political arena. There is no other method than that invented and applied successfully to prevent war within the borders of each country: to substitute the rule of law in place of the survival of the fittest, to put a limit on the absolute power of the states. It is a very long path that will require much more time than the war which broke out on September 11. Those alive today will not see the end, but they must know that we have already set off, that the goa is known and that we have a compass.

An invitation to re-read

Economic globalization has peculiar characteristics, which make it different from internationalization, and allow us to consider it a new phenomenon, linked to the scientific revolution. Its effects amplify and accelerate the disintegration process of the international economic order initiated by the decline of the American hegemony and the break-up of the Soviet Union. National states, even the United States, and intergovernmental institutions cannot face global problems, for which an adequate government level is still missing.To the growing evidence of the states' impotence corresponds the spreading of a sense of insecurity, which shows itself in market volatility, in xenophobic and micro-nationalist reactions by part of the groups feeling threatened, and in the forming of new global movements.

The most alarming questions relate to:
- the environmental non-sustainability of a globalized development using present-day technologies
- the economic and moral failure in wealth distribution among States and inside them
- the blow inflicted on the insuring, redistributing and social-state stabilization mechanisms by the "competition
law", imposed by transnational companies on national states
- the lack of any law guaranteeing a counterpower to global oligopolies, big tax-evaders and the new organized crime
- monetary disorder, the progressive destruction of every controlling and protecting net for financial markets misbehaviours, and the lack of a last-resort lender at world level
- finally, the primacy granted to free trading of goods and services over any other consideration of environmental sustainability, food safety, health protection, financial lawfulness and stability; a primacy ensured by the judicial and sanctioning power enjoyed, unique among all international institutions, by the WTO, not subjected to any democratic control.

The present article is an invitation to re-read, as federalists, some particularly meaningful texts, as a learning process to convince ourselves that such problems can only be governed at world level.

On the environmental question I believe I shall mention the articles by Georgescu-Roegen and the Reports by the Club of Rome, by the World Commission for Environment and Development, by the UK Department for the Environment and by the Worldwatch Institute.

Georgescu-Roegen, considered the father of bio-economy, argues (1970-1974)¹ that production as practiced according to the present economic "laws", cannot last for long, for physical reasons. According to the principles of thermodynamics, in every system in which energy flows the phenomenon of entropy takes place, giving rise to a degradation of usable energy. The matter, in the course of the processes that transform it from its natural state into waste, is subjected also to an entropic, so to speak, degradation. As entropy is invisible to economic calculations, we cannot deceive ourselves that it will be the market that will take care of bioeconomic problems.
The market, left to itself, destroys the very bases for any muchneeded reconversion of our consumption models and production modes, starting with the renewable resources dependent on the Sun, like forests and a rational agriculture, which represent the real energy source for the future. A government of the economy at world level is necessary.
The MIT Report for the Club of Rome (1972)² was leading to the following conclusions: without a radical change, the non-renewable resources which the industrial system is depending on will be depleted within one century; even if the resources were not depleted, a collapse will take place anyway, due to pollution; it could be avoided only if a limit is put immediately on population growth and pollution. In that Report, a group of managers and intellectuals, founded by Aurelio Peccei and close to industry circles, was expressing for the first time, before the oil shock, the awareness of the risk of a general collapse of our planet.

The Report for the UN prepared by the World Commission for Environment and Development (1987)³ demonstrates very well the interdependence of environmental problems. A "sustainable global development" requires that the richest adopt life styles in agreement with the planet's ecological means; it can be pursued only if population size and demographic growth are in agreement with the production capacity, which may vary; it implies difficult choices to be made in several fields: demography, food safety, conservation of species and eco-systems, energy, industry, urbanization. "So, in the end, sustainable development cannot be founded but on political will", through a deep institutional change, because "traditional forms of national sovereignty are posing special problems as to how to manage common resources and ecosystems territorially divided among several countries".
Blueprint (1989)⁴ was originally prepared as a Report for the UK Department for the Environment. Its authors state the possibility and the necessity to use an economic approach to environmental policy, as the costs of managing the "collective global assets", like the atmosphere and the oceans, are potentially very high. To future generations we shall leave a stock of capital goods, both natural and manmade, not smaller than the one available today. A trade-off between the forms of that capital requires that a "value" be given also to environmental assets. For some environmental assets there is no possibility of trade-off. There are obvious reasons for adopting a preventive approach, whereby the trend should be for the conservation of the natural capital. The means for assuring a sustainable development include a normative approach, based on the definition of standards, and a range of measures which operate through the market: taxes on emissions and waste, systems of depositsreimbursements and negotiable permits for emissions and the use of resources.

The seventeenth Report by the Worldwatch Institute (2000)⁵ shows how the world has not been able so far to embark on a sustainable global economy. At the beginning of the new century few problems have been solved, new challenges have to be faced and the complexity of potential "surprises" overcomes our ability of analysis. As to the institutions that should take care of preserving life on the planet, the Institute does not give any opinion.

The concept of sustainable development can be shifted from the environmental problems to those affecting the relations between the world's rich North and its poor South. This is a confirmation of the very tight interdependence between the North/South question and the environmental one. The perverse distribution of wealth is the cause of wars, which in turn destroy the environment. The over-exploitation of the South's resources for the hyper-consumers in the North to be able to carry on their living models accelerates the depleting of resources and the environmental degradation in the whole world. The South is paying its foreign debt with the only resources it has, the natural ones, urged to do so by institutions and financial markets. On the other hand, a development of the South along the lines followed by the North with the presentlyavailable technologies would drive to an even faster depletion of any possibility of life on Earth. Three things: Willy Brandt's denounciation, Samir Amin's protest and the UNDP's dramatic survey sum up adequately the national governments' failure with respect to this problem.

The Report of the independent Commission on the problems of international development, chaired by Willy Brandt, was presented to the United Nations in 1980⁶, at the end of those 1970s during which the national ruling classes, traumatized by the 1968 movement and by two oil crises, were apparently showing a new sensibility towards the limits to development, going in some occasion so far as recognizing that the solution to global problems required a supranational approach. Brandt himself, in his introduction to the Report, identifies the common interest, for the North as well as for the South, in the moral obligation to survive; and in peace the supreme value to defend. "There must be room for the idea of a global Community, or at least of a global responsibility deriving from the experience of regional communities". After his remark that official aids to developing countries were representing at the time 5% of the world's yearly military budget, he complained that the democratic method was not applying to international policy. He put forward proposals for taxation at world level and forestalled the objection: "somebody can tell us that it is difficult to think of imposing international taxes, lacking an international government. However we believe that the necessity of some aspects of what can be defined an international government has already proved to be inevitable... and before the end of the century the world most probably will not be in a condition to operate without some acceptable form of international taxation and without procedures for how to formulate decisions that improve a great deal on the present ones". It is highly remarkable, in addition, how Brandt hints at the spreading of communications as the necessary condition for the "common man" to be able to understand international problems and to participate in their solution.

Communications have advanced exponentially over the last twenty years. Moreover, the end of the cold war should have brought with it the end of hot wars, fought among the poorest satellites of the two empires. Instead, no progress has been made towards the new world order hoped for by Brandt. The crisis of the American hegemony makes a unipolar world unthinkable and the power vacuum is filled by the ultra-free-trading ideology, according to which the global market will self-rule. Instead of extending Keynes to world scale, they pretend to restore the pre-Keynesian world. In the light of the first outcomes of such an approach, it cannot come as a surprise that it has given strength back to the most radical criticism of capitalism. Samir Amir is one of the most radical thinkers of our time on the problems raised by capitalism's ever-changing nature⁷, North-South relations and development theory; he held several institutional posts and is presently leading in Dakar the Forum for the Third World. He depicts very well to what extreme anger globalization of economy can drive, when a political guidance able to exploit its positive aspects and to neutralize its calamitous ones is lacking.

It is the UNDP which draws the statistics of the global disaster and informs us with its annual Reports. From the one for 1999 we learn that at the end of the millennium the richest 20% of the population still takes for itself 86% of the planet's wealth, compared with 1% of the last quintile (one billion people). The first quintile monopolizes 82% of global export, 68% of investments directed abroad, 74% of all global telephone lines, 93,3% of Internet users (compared with 0,2% of the last quintile). And we also learn that the richest 225 people in the world enjoy together a wealth equal to the yearly income of half the world population. The Report 2000⁸ shows the relation between human rights and human development. "In short, human development is essential for realizing human rights, and human rights are essential for a full human development... Without the rule of law and a fair administration of justice, laws on human rights remain on paper... As in the past, in the 21st century progress will be attained by fighting against the values of division and very strong obverse economic and political interests... Poor countries must accelerate their growth in order to generate the resources necessary for financing the eradication of poverty and for realizing human rights... The global governance system must be transparent and fair, and give voice to the small and poor countries... The world community must go back to the bold vision of those who drew up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

While poor countries are beset by the countless perverse effects of a foolish and unfair development, the industrialized ones are grappling with the welfare-state question, initiated by the crisis of the regulating system as established by the Fordist and Keynesian paradigm. Aglietta, Acocella and Rodrik have in common the regulation approach.

The necessity of a deep reform of the welfare state is framed in a masterly manner by Aglietta⁹ in the context of the mundialization of capitalism and the crisis of the wage society. The regulation approach underlines the role of the state in guaranteeing the Keynesian macroeconomic consistency and in inserting it structurally into institutions, so as to build collective bases in production, foster technical progress, master collective risks in finance, promote equity in the distribution of income. In the framework of a Fordist regulating system, social transfers, entrusted to national states, "are inspired by solidarity and by protection from non-diversifiable social risks. Thus they are not regulated by merchant contracts, but by social rules. The moral risk stems from the fact that the social protection system does not control the social costs it assumes upon itself. It organizes a passive solidarity in which responsibilities are diluted". But a purely individualistic society cannot exist, "equity is then an important dimension in reconciling capitalist interests and social progress in a wage society". Aglietta does not limit himself to examine the causes of the decline of the Fordist paradigm, but he also sketches the general lines for passing to a new regulating system.

Are Italian wages decided in Beijing? A specific session of the annual meeting (1997) of the Italian Society of Economists tries to answer this question. The papers presented there have been published by Acocella, adding two essays by the editor himself¹⁰. One can recognize the elements of novelty brought about by globalization, in comparison with the former international integration, and the competitive mechanism which may well trigger a "lowering race" among national states in the matter of welfare state, tax policies and environmental policies.

Rodrik, from his privileged and prestigious vantage point at the Institute for International Economics, rings the alarm bell for the danger that globalization, advancing much faster than our ability to govern it, will generate reactions of rejection towards free trade. The movement that for the first time took to the streets in Seattle confirms the propriety of the question he posed in 1997¹¹. Rodrik notes:
1) the high probability that the reduction of barriers to trade and investments will increase the asymmetry between groups who can move beyond national borders and those who cannot;
2) the globalization impact on national norms and institutions;
3) the increase of the demand of social insurance with the increase of international vulnerability, and on the contrary the weakening of the states' capacity to offer welfare, under the pressure of international competition. Trading with low-income countries increases the premium to qualified workers in rich countries, further impoverishing the less-qualified workers. Greater inequality, greater insecurity, lower salary and longer unemployment hit the workers and weaken the trade unions. International trade increases the cost of maintaining differing welfare models, and thus it puts pressure on national norms and institutions, up to affecting the social protection levels enjoyed by the citizens. Globalization, heightening of perceived risk, greater demand of public insurance, lower supply of the same: here is the spiral which could undermine people's approval for trade liberalization and could make us fall back into the spires of protectionism. It is essential that globalization be "managed" so as to retain people's approval for free trade. But how? Rodrik limits himself to state the necessity for national laws to converge to a certain degree, but such convergence should be promoted by the same international organizations the democratic legitimacy of which is so fiercely challenged today.

National laws and intergovernmental agreements are no longer credible, because states can ensure their enforcement only on subjects having limited or no possibility to move beyond their borders, and international organizations do not have a legal and effective sanctioning power. For activities already globalized or in process of globalization, be they legal, illegal or criminal, the states do not succeed in enforcing laws, in collecting taxes, in guarding social cohesion as cared for by labour right and social pacts, in exercising, in sum, the regulating activity made necessary by capitalism's inability to self-rule. Instead of acknowledging that the problem can only be solved by passing from international to supranational right (as partly has already been done in the European Union), today the tendency is to take the market as the dominant and the really general institution. The legality question takes on again quite a central position, especially as far as the two global operators par excellence are concerned: the transnational enterprise and organized crime. The first evades national rules, and in particular the ones on taxation and labour laws (Galgano et al., 1993)¹² and tends towards monopoly (Amato, 1997). The second has already cast doubts on the capability of national states to defend lawfulness (Rossi, 2000).

Galgano takes under examination the postindustrial economy and the crisis of the national state; he describes the universal spreading of the lex mercatoria, but concludes "we will call for a code of behaviour for multinational companies from the UN". Cassese finds in the growth of "international and supranational public powers" the possibility to overcome the limits of national governments in controlling the economy. Tremonti analyzes the fiscal crisis of the states, a consequence of the discrepancy between the territorial limits of tax collection and the global distribution of wealth, and believes that it can be countered by moving imposition from individuals to goods. Treu, finally, observes that labour right unification and its national character have come to an end, due to the enterprises sidestepping the territorial laws by delocalizing themselves, and underlines the strain between the internationalization of labour right and its segmentation.

Some of the main sectors of economic activity are already controlled, at world level, by a handful of transnational companies; other sectors will soon find themselves in the same situation. Anti-trust authorities of national states, even of the United States, face increasing difficulties in avoiding that cartels are created among oligopolists or that a single company dominates the world market in any one sector. The world system is based on national states formally endowed with exclusive sovereignty, although they are actually subjected to the primacy of foreign policy and to the ever-moreintricated intertwining of agreements and institutions of intergovernmental cooperation. This artful independence in an interdependent world not only increases the asymmetry of the marketing power connected to product specialization, but is also the cause of an unbalance in marketing power of enterprises, depending on the sizes of the markets controlled by their respective states of origin. It is not by chance that the question of trusts has been dealt with in a diametrically opposed way until the Second World War, but with consequences still infected to this day, in the United States and in the European national states. In America the first big politically unified market was constituted, the first big enterprises were founded and a process tending to block competition and concentrate in a few hands the control of the markets was developed since the beginning of the 1900s. The answer of the federal government was the anti-trust legislation. The European national states acted in a diametrically opposed way. As the size of the markets, so absurdly fragmented, prevented the formation of enterprises fit for global competition, each state bowed to its own Realpolitik, encouraging the formation of national trusts in order to use them or to be used by them.How organic this plot was cannot be better illustrated than by the relationship between the coal and steel trust and the German rearmament between the two wars. Protection of competition requires that the contrasting power be moved to the same level already reached by capital, that is from the national to the regional and world level. This is the only way to solve the "liberal democracy dilemma in the market history", that is to say the dilemma between political democracy and economic efficiency, denounced by Amato (1997)¹³.

Organized crime already acts at global level in key sectors, like the reduction to slavery of human beings, trafficking of arms and drugs, counterfeiting. A deregulated financial system, as we will see, allows and fuels, through market manipulation and capital recycling, the unchecked growth of illegal activities. The globalized world is a lawless world, risking catastrophe. Guido Rossi (2000)¹⁴ is convinced and convincing, when he expresses his opinion that only the UN can restore lawfulness.

The financial questiondominates, sums up and runs across all others.
The financial markets are the most globalized. The merchandise they deal with, money, is the most dematerialized. The biggest financial companies and the financial departments of banks and transnational companies control a volume of transactions several times bigger than that of the domestic product and of the international exchange of some countries. The national states are no longer in the condition to counter, with their reserves, speculative attacks against their currencies. The hegemonic state gave up in 1971, not fulfilling its pledge of the convertibility of the dollar in gold. Thus it decreed the end of the fixed, but orderly modifiable, exchanges regime, known as the Bretton Woods system. In 1975 the Rambouillet summit set off an unbridled deregulation of capital movements. The advancement in information and telecommunication technologies provided the necessary tools for the vanishing of the already wavering national borders, thus allowing a unified financial market to be born. There have been efforts to recreate the conditions for monetary stability at the level of great regional aggregates, but so far only the European Union has attained the goal of a single currency, with twelve out of fifteen member states willing to adhere. At the world level, three functions, vital for the system to operate, i.e. last-resort loans, control of the amount of circulating money and surveillance, are being carried out with less and less efficiency by national central banks. The United States hinders any reform project in order not to transfer its ruling power to a supranational organization, which will exercise it through the force of right instead of the right of force. In the meantime the markets are running towards the impending catastrophe. On the wake of the latest Keynes, the one of Bretton Woods, two economists have been fighting with courage for the reform of the international monetary system: Robert Triffin and Susan Strange.
At the end of the 1950s, Robert Triffin proposed to confer to the IMF the currency reserves in possession of the member states and to bestow on it a role similar to that of a central superbank. The result was modest: the special drawing rights were launched, which actually were not transfering monetary sovereignty from the United States to the Fund. In touch with the European federalists, Triffin thought that a preliminary step was necessary, i.e. to create regional monetary areas, in order to make it possible to reach the final objective, a world currency. Since the beginning of the 1970s, he devoted his life to the creation of the European currency. The World Money Maze¹⁵ denounces the situation being determined when a national currency is used as the international reserve currency. His criticism, addressed at that time to the dollar, is valid as well should the euro take the same role. The creation of the euro then makes it more topical and sensible the objective of a world currency.

Susan Strange (1998)¹⁶ stresses how during these last years the system has become ever more crazy and uncontrollable. Technological changes and innovations like the derivative financial instruments, asset-backed securities, speculative funds have made the "casino" bigger and faster. The unstable balance depends on the success of Europe's political unification and the strengthening of other regional monetary areas. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are not capable of helping the poorest debtor countries. Financial crime has spread ever more and the connection between mafias and dirty-money recycling has strengthened. Embezzlement of public money is made possible by fiscal havens. National regulating systems are in distress because of capital mobility and the power of financial markets.The Bank for International Settlements did not succeed in establishing standards of norms equal for everybody. Banks must selfregulate, but have no intention to relax the banking secrecy. And yet "the task of exercising a joint supervision through a new institution would certainly be a formidable one, but not impossible".

The progress made by national legislations and international agreements in reducing the level of unruliness of the problems taken under examination here (sustainability of development, equity in international redistribution of wealth, solidarity within states, lawfulness, financial stability) is not only modest, but is more and more often frustrated by the primacy given to the WTO rules over all others. The problem of the democratic control of those organizations having the power to declare ineffectual the decisions democratically taken by individual states is already in the world agenda. The "people of Seattle" has put forward, with the WTO question, the one, even more complex and crucial, of international democracy. Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza supply documentary evidence (2000)¹⁷ of the activity carried out by the WTO in its first years. As Ralph Nader points out in his presentation of the book, "globalization of finance and trade is drawn out by multinational companies, which, in the absence of rules valid everywhere, are maneuvering simply on the basis of their needs. The WTO is an essential step in formalizing and strengthening a system created on purpose for such an aim. Better defined as worldwide globalization of economy, this new economic model is characterized by the apposition of supranational constraints to the legal and practical capacity of individual states to subordinate their trading activity to other political objectives... But the idea of a global trade without any democratic control appears calamitous for the rest of the world, that would be severely exposed to a deregulated entrepreneurial initiative, bringing with it a lowering of living, health and environmental
conditions, ... and of democracy itself".


1 K. Mayumi and J. M. Gowdy (Eds.), Bioeconomics and Sustainability: Essays in Honor of Nicholas Geoergescu-Roegen, 1999.
2 D. Meadows, D. Meadows (Eds.), The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind, 2001.
3 Our Common Future, Oxford 1987.
4 Blueprint for a Green Economy, London 1989. Blue Print 2, London, 1991.
5 State of the World 2000, Washington 2000.
6 North-South. A Programme for Survival, 1980.
7 Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization, 1997.
8 Human Development Report 2000, Oxford 2000.
9 Michel Aglietta, Régulation et Crises du Capitalisme, Paris 1997.
10 Nicola Acocella (Ed.), Globalizzazione e Stato Sociale, Bologna 1999.
11 Dani Rodrik, Has Globalization gone too far?, Washington, 1997.
12 Francesco Galgano et al., Nazioni senza ricchezza, ricchezze senza nazione, Bologna 1993.
13 Giuliano Amato, Antitrust and the Bounds of Power, Oxford 1997.
14 Guido Rossi, La sovranità degli stati di fronte ai reati globali, in La Repubblica, Dec. 13, 2000.
15 Robert Triffin, The World Money Maze: National currencies in international payments, 1966.
16 Susan Strange, Mad Money, Manchester 1998.
17 Lori Wallach and Michelle Sforza, Whose Trade Organization?, Public Citizen Foundation 1999.

The failure of the Convention would open the road to the forces of nationalism in Europe

There are moments in history when it is necessary to make radical choices. In Europe, where national governments have resigned themselves to making foreign policy in the shadow of the American superpower, politics has forgotten the harsh distinction between good and evil, between peace and war. And yet, whoever works in politics should know that, in moments of crisis, the need to make dramatic choices is inescapable. At the time of Mussolini and Hitler two opposite ranks formed: fascists and antifascists. The undecided were overwhelmed by the course of events. Today, the European political class hesitates to make the decisive choice for the European Federation. In the European Convention, and outside it, the debate is wasted on erudite discussions on the difference between the Federation of nation states, the United States of Europe, the Union of nation states and so on, not to mention those who want to muddle the cards with the European Super State. Le Pen silenced everyone with salutary frankness: he, racist without false modesties, wants the Europe of nations; he is against the European Federation. Le Pen is right. There is no third way. Whoever wants to unite Europe and at the same time keep national divisions deceives the citizens and prepares the ground for disaster. The undecided, postponing once again the choice for a European Federation, will bring grist to the mill of the anti-federalists and will be overwhelmed by the mounting nationalism that is infecting all European countries, to a greater or lesser extent. The result of the French presidential elections, despite the leap of pride of the democratic forces, should be a severe warning for those who have the fate of democracy at heart. The dictatorships of Mussolini and of Hitler were helped by a political class than did not fight their ascent with enough firmness. In the nation state democracy is fragile. Europe is once again yielding to a diabolical mixture of nationalism and populism. The Fifth Republic is in the throes of death. The French citizens were compelled to participate in an election without alternatives, so as not to put the Republic in the hands of a racist. The French no longer trust their Constitution. Part of the political class has already got to work on reforming it, launching the project of a Sixth Republic. It is an illusion. The problems denounced by Le Pen are real and will not be resolved by merely reforming the electoral and government system. Immigration, unemployment, social insecurity, the crisis of the Welfare State are all problems that have a European dimension and that can be better tackled by a European government, capable of acting in foreign and economic policy, in order to respond effectively to the challenges of globalisation. The political unity of Europe would change the framework of the political struggle. European democracy would flank national democracy, thus reinforcing it. If the nation remains the outer limit of political life, the nationalists will have the game in hand. The alternative to the re-emergence of nationalism is the European Federation. The Federation is the way to give back a future to the nations that, today, whilst claiming to make their own foreign policy, contribute to keep Europe divided and prevent it from speaking with a single voice in the world. The national cultures have made a decisive contribution to the construction of contemporary cosmopolitan civilisation, with their literature, their philosophy, their scientific discoveries. The European Federation will be the true guarantee of the autonomy and independence of the European nations. The European political classes, at the time of the Cold War, thanks to the American protectorate, were under the illusion that they could enjoy some benefits of European integration without giving up national sovereignty, which was reduced to a legal fiction. After the Cold War, the fiction of national sovereignty was revealed to be a plain lie. No national European state is any longer in a position to take on responsibility for foreign policy all by itself. De Gaulle succeeded, for a short time, to revive the myth of the "grandeur" of France. Chirac is the standard bearer of its decline. The debate on the future of Europe suffers from schizophrenia. The governments refuse the political unity of Europe, but want European integration, because without it they would have to sacrifice a large part of the civil, social and economic achievement that European cooperation guarantees. This contradictory behaviour can no longer continue. The European Convention must decide. The political unity of Europe is impossible without a European democratic government legitimised by popular will. The European Convention must approve a federal Constitution. The right of veto must be abolished. In proposing the Community, Monnet thus advised the governments of the day: "Nous ne coalisons pas des Etats, nous unissons des hommes".Nevertheless, the European governments, by neglecting their initial engagements, prevented the Union from becoming a political community. The Constitution will be the pact that will unite European citizens in a new community of destiny. Federal Europe will not be able to develop without the active engagement of the European parties. Today, the political parties that draw their inspiration from the values of democracy risk being overwhelmed by populism. European populism is the fruit of the break up of national identity. In a situation of disorientation, any demagogue can appeal with success to "their own" people. The great currents of European political thought that contributed to shaping the liberal State, the democratic State and the social State, the pride of European civilisation, can only have a future in Europe if they propose to voters a program of government for the Union, within the framework of the European parties that must prepare themselves from now on for the decisive European elections of 2004. Starting from Europe, a great task awaits the European parties and their voters: to build the liberal, democratic and social State at the supranational level. This is the way to give politics a future again. The European Convention represents an unrepeatable historical occasion for uniting Europe and saving democracy. Nevertheless, parties and governments must understand that the Convention can fail. If it does not approve a federal Constitution, but re-proposes a new Treaty to European citizens in order to restore the intergovernmental Europe of the past, it will certainly provoke a crisis of rejection. The Irish have already said "No" to the muddle of Nice. The time has come to choose between federalism and anti-federalism. Whoever does not support the project of European Federation will, albeit unknowingly, play the game of Le Pen and all his imitators in Europe.