View source for Altiero Spinelli

{{short description|Italian politician (1907–1986)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2023}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| honorific-prefix    = 
| name                = Altiero Spinelli
| image               = Altiero Spinelli2.jpg
| office1             = [[European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship|Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship]]
| president1          = [[Franco Maria Malfatti]]<br />[[Sicco Mansholt]]
| term_start1         = 1 July 1970
| term_end1           = 4 July 1976
| predecessor1        = [[Guido Colonna di Paliano]]
| successor1          = [[Étienne Davignon]]
| office3             = Member of the [[Chamber of Deputies (Italy)|Chamber of Deputies]]
| term_start3         = 5 July 1976
| term_end3           = 11 July 1983
| constituency3       = [[Rome]]
| constituency_MP2    = [[Central Italy (European Parliament constituency)|Central Italy]]
| parliament2         = European
| term_start2         = 17 July 1979
| term_end2           = 23 May 1986
| birth_date          = {{birth date|df=y|1907|8|31}}
| birth_place         = Rome, [[Kingdom of Italy]]
| death_date          = {{death date and age|df=y|1986|5|23|1907|8|31}}
| death_place         = Rome, Italy
| nationality         = [[Italian nationality law|Italian]]
| party               = [[Independent Left (Italy)|Independent Left]] (1976–1983)
| otherparty          = [[Communist Party of Italy|PCdI]] (1924–1937)<br />[[Action Party (Italy)|PdA]] (1943–1946)<br />[[Republican Democratic Concentration|CDR]] (1946)
| spouse              = {{Marriage|[[Ursula Hirschmann]]|1945}}
| children            = 3, including [[Barbara Spinelli|Barbara]]
| profession          = Writer
| caption             = Spinelli in 1969
}}
{{Communism in Italy|expanded=People}}
'''Altiero Spinelli''' (31 August 1907 – 23 May 1986) was an Italian politician, [[political theorist]] and [[Federal Europe|European federalist]], referred to as one of the [[founding fathers of the European Union]]. A [[communist]] and [[Italian resistance movement|militant anti-fascist]] in his youth, Spinelli spent 10 years imprisoned by the [[Fascist Italy|Italian fascist]] regime. Having grown disillusioned with [[Stalinism]], he broke with the [[Communist Party of Italy]] in 1937. Interned in Ventotene during World War II, he, along with fellow [[democratic socialist]]s, drafted the manifesto ''For a Free and United Europe'' (most commonly known as the [[Ventotene Manifesto]]) in 1941, considered a precursor of the [[European integration process]].

Spinelli had a leading role in the foundation of the [[European Federalist Movement]], and had a strong influence on the first few decades of post-World War II European integration. Later, he helped to re-launch the integration process in the 1980s. By the time of his death, he had been a [[member of the European Commission]] for six years, and a [[member of the European Parliament]] for ten years right up until his death. The main building of the [[European Parliament]] in Brussels is named after him. The 1987–1988 academic year at the [[College of Europe]] and the 2009–2010 academic year of the [[European College of Parma]] were named in his honour.

==Early life==
Spinelli was born in Rome, the son of a [[socialist]] father. He joined the [[Communist Party of Italy]] (PCd'I) at age 17 in 1924.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Burgess |first1=Michael |title=Federal Ideas in the European Community: Altiero Spinelli and 'European Union', 1981–84 |journal=Government & Opposition |date=1986 |volume=19 |issue=3}}</ref> Following his entry into radical journalism, he was arrested in 1927 and spent ten years in prison and a further six in confinement. In June 1939 he was interned on the island of [[Ventotene]] (in [[Lazio]]) along with some eight hundred other political opponents of the regime. Here he became involved in the PCI underground.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Haller |first1=Max |title=European Integration as an Elite Process: The Failure of a Dream? |date=2008 |publisher=Routledge |page=102|postscript=. See also Spinelli, Altiero (1987). ''Come ho tentato di diventare saggio'' (1987). This autobiographical work was to be in two parts. The first part, which appeared during Spinelli's lifetime under the title ''Io Ulisse'' (1984), covers the life of the author until the Liberation (1943). Spinelli's writing on the second part (''La goccia e la roccia'') was interrupted by his death in 1986.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Burgess |first1=Michael |title=The British Tradition of Federalism |date=1995 |publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press |page=171}}</ref> In 1937, he was expelled from the PCd'I for opposing [[Stalinism]], undermining the [[Bolshevik]] ideology and supporting [[Trotskyism]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/200712/20071218ATT16301/20071218ATT16301EN.pdf|title=Altiero Spinelli – European Federalist|access-date= 8 January 2019}}</ref>

==Ventotene Manifesto==
[[File:Spinelli Ventotene.JPG|left|thumbnail|Spinelli when a prisoner in Ventotene, 1930s]]
In June 1941, well before the outcome of the war was safely predictable, Spinelli and fellow prisoner [[Ernesto Rossi (politician)|Ernesto Rossi]] completed the [[Ventotene Manifesto]], eventually entitled ''Per un'Europa libera e unita'' ("For a Free and United Europe. A Draft Manifesto"), which argued that, if the fight against the fascist powers were successful, it would be in vain if it merely led to the re-establishment of the old European system of sovereign nation-states in shifting alliances. This would inevitably lead to war again. The document called for the establishment of a European federation by the democratic powers after the war. Because of a need for secrecy and a lack of proper materials at the time, the Manifesto was written on cigarette papers, concealed in the false bottom of a tin box and smuggled to the mainland by [[Ursula Hirschmann]]. It was then circulated through the [[Italian Resistance]], and was later adopted as the programme of the [[European Federalist Movement]] (MFE), which Spinelli, Colorni and some 20 others established, as soon as they were able to leave their internment camp. The founding meeting was held in clandestinity in Milan on the 27/28 of August 1943.{{cn|date=December 2023}}

The Manifesto was widely circulated in other resistance movements towards the end of the war. Resistance leaders from several countries met clandestinely in [[Geneva]] in 1944, a meeting attended by Spinelli. The Manifesto put forward proposals for creating a European federation of states, the primary aim of which was to tie European countries so closely together that they would no longer be able to go to war with one another. As in many European left-wing political circles, this sort of move towards federalist ideas was argued as a reaction to the destructive excesses of nationalism. The ideological underpinnings for a united Europe can thus be traced to hostility to nationalism. In the founding meeting of the MFE, he said: "If a post-war order is established in which each State retains its complete national sovereignty, the basis for a Third World War would still exist even after the Nazi attempt to establish the domination of the German race in Europe has been frustrated."{{cn|date=December 2023}}

The Manifesto criticised the "capitalist imperialism which our own generation has seen expand to the point of
forming totalitarian states and to the unleashing of world wars".<ref>{{cite book |title=Continental Plans for European Union 1939–1945 |date=2019 |publisher=De Gruyter |page=474}}</ref> It also declared that "the European revolution must be socialist, that is it must have as its goal the emancipation of the working classes and the realization for them of more humane living conditions".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wiesner |first1=Claudia |title=Inventing the EU as a Democratic Polity Concepts, Actors and Controversies |date=2018 |publisher=Springer International Publishing |page=91}}</ref> However it opposed "doctrinaire" formulations of transitions to socialism and said "private property must be abolished, limited, corrected, extended: instance by instance, however, not dogmatically according to principle".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Cold War: Interpreting Conflict Through Primary Documents: Volume 1 |date=2018 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |page=114}}</ref>

==Federalist advocate==
After the war, Spinelli, leading the federalist MFE, played a vanguard role in the early episodes of European integration, criticising the small-steps approach and the dominance of intergovernmentalism, feeling even that the chance to unite Europe had been missed as sovereign states were re-established without any common bond other than the functionalist [[OEEC]] and the largely symbolic [[Council of Europe]]. Even the [[European Coal and Steel Community]] (ECSC) was felt to be too sectoral. The MFE believed governments alone would never relinquish their national power without popular pressure. They advocated a European constituent assembly to draft a European Constitution.

A critic of the USSR, Spinelli argued that "only when it is faced by a united federal Europe will the USSR be brought to a halt".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Fabbrini |first1=Sergio |title=Democracy and Federalism in the European Union and the United States Exploring Post-National Governance |date=2005 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |page=32}}</ref>

This approach eventually had a response from governments when they set up the "ad hoc assembly" of 1952–3. It was Spinelli who persuaded Italian Prime Minister [[Alcide De Gasperi]] to insist in the negotiation of the [[European Defence Community]] (EDC) treaty on a provision for a parliamentary assembly to draw up plans for placing the EDC, the ECSC and any other development within a global constitutional framework to "replace the present provisional organization" with "a subsequent federal or confederal structure based on the principle of the separation of powers and having, in particular, a two-chamber system of representation". The Assembly was invited to submit its proposals within six months of its constitutive meeting following the entry into force of the EDC treaty. In fact, the Foreign Ministers, meeting three months after the signature of the EDC treaty, invited the ECSC Assembly immediately to draft a "treaty constituting a European Political Authority" without waiting for ratification of the EDC Treaty.

Spinelli played a significant role in advising the drafting of the Assembly's proposal for a European "Statute". However, the failure of France to ratify the EDC treaty meant it was all to no immediate avail. Some of its ideas, however, were taken up in subsequent events.

==<span lang="sq" dir="ltr">European</span> politician==
Following the crisis of the failure of the EDC and 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 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]]<ref>''At last, Mr Eurotec''. The Economist (London, England), Saturday, 6 March 1971; pg. 92; Issue 6654.</ref> from 1970 to 1976, taking responsibility for industrial policy to develop European policies in a new field.

Spinelli decided to run in the [[1979 European Parliament election in Italy|first direct elections]] to the [[European Parliament]] in 1979. He did so as an independent candidate on the list of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which by then had become a [[Eurocommunism|Eurocommunist]] party and was keen to have prominent independent figures to stand on its list of candidates.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Murray |first1=Philomena |title=Visions of European Unity |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge}}</ref> Spinelli agreed to stand on the PCI list upon the premise that the PCI was "committed to democracy; that the idea of an ‘[[Historic Compromise|historical compromise]]’ was seriously meant and would be respected; that European unification was to be supported and the country’s present position in the [[Eastern bloc|East]]-[[Western bloc|West]] equilibrium maintained".<ref name=euro>{{cite book |title=Euro-communism Its Roots and Future in Italy and Elsewhere |date=1978 |pages=179–80}}</ref>

While an MEP he was a member of the [[Communist and Allies Group]].<ref name=dunphy>{{cite book |last1=Dunphy |first1=Richard |title=Contesting Capitalism? Left Parties and European Integration |date=2004 |publisher=Manchester University Press |page=54}}</ref> Spinelli advocated what he described as a "democratic and social transformation of the European Community". He praised the French communists for providing a "positive contribution to this battle"<ref name = dunphy/> and said that under his influence the PCI had "adopted the line which I had sought and supported for many years, especially the need to transcend economic unification and move towards a European political union".<ref name = euro/>
 
To this end, he began to gather like-minded [[Member of the European Parliament|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 the union. <ref>The European Parliament's Role in Closer European Integration', London, Macmillan (1998)ISBN 0-333-72252-3 and New York, St Martin's Press (1998) ISBN 0-312-21103-1. Reprinted in paperback by Palgrave, London (2001) ISBN 0-333-94938-2</ref>
 
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).<ref>See Bieber, Jacqué and Weiler: ''An Ever Closer Union. A critical analysis of the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union''. Luxembourg, 1985. This publication also contains the text of the treaty. More recent comments and analysis of the 1984 treaty and Spinelli's role are found in Burgess, Michael: ''Federalism and European Union: the Building of Europe'', 1950–2000. Routledge 2000; Corbett, Richard: ''The European Parliament's Role in Greater EU Integration.''(1998) Palgrave. 424 pages. {{ISBN|0-333-94938-2}}</ref>

Spinelli's project was soon buried by the governments of the member states. However, it provided an impetus for the negotiations which led to the [[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.

==Personal life==

He married [[Ursula Hirschmann]], a German [[anti-fascist activist]] and fellow advocate of European federalism, in 1945 and they had three daughters: Diana, [[Barbara Spinelli|Barbara]], and Sara. Ursula already had another three daughters (Silvia, Renata, and [[Eva Colorni|Eva]]) from her first husband [[Eugenio Colorni]], who was killed by the Nazis in Rome in 1944. Eva Colorni was married to Indian economist [[Amartya Sen]] in the last seven years of her life.

==Reception==

Although the resultant treaties fell short of what Spinelli would have liked, his efforts triggered a new momentum in European integration, including a major increase in the powers of the European Parliament within the EU system. In honour of his work, the largest building of the [[Espace Léopold]], the European Parliament complex in Brussels, was named after him.

On 15 September 2010, under the name [[Spinelli Group]], an initiative was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU). Prominent supporters of the group are: [[Jacques Delors]], [[Joschka Fischer]], [[Daniel Cohn-Bendit]], [[Andrew Duff]], [[Elmar Brok]].

== Electoral history ==
{|class=wikitable style="width:55%; border:1px #AAAAFF solid"
|-
!width=12%|Election
!width=23%|House
!width=34%|Constituency
!width=5% colspan="2"|Party
!width=12%|Votes
!width=12%|Result
|-
![[1976 Italian general election|1976]]
|[[Chamber of Deputies (Italy)|Chamber of Deputies]]
|[[List of Italian constituencies (1946–1994)#Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone|Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone]]
|bgcolor="{{party color|Italian Communist Party}}" |
|[[Italian Communist Party|PCI]]
|35,867
|{{nowrap|{{tick|15}} '''Elected'''}}
|-
![[1979 Italian general election|1979]]
|[[Chamber of Deputies (Italy)|Chamber of Deputies]]
|[[List of Italian constituencies (1946–1994)#Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone|Rome–Viterbo–Latina–Frosinone]]
|bgcolor="{{party color|Italian Communist Party}}" |
|[[Italian Communist Party|PCI]]
|21,007
|{{nowrap|{{tick|15}} '''Elected'''}}
|-
![[1979 European Parliament election in Italy|1979]]
|[[European Parliament]]
|[[Central Italy (European Parliament constituency)|Central Italy]]
|bgcolor="{{party color|Italian Communist Party}}" |
|[[Italian Communist Party|PCI]]
|129,014
|{{nowrap|{{tick|15}} '''Elected'''}}
|-
![[1984 European Parliament election in Italy|1984]]
|[[European Parliament]]
|[[Central Italy (European Parliament constituency)|Central Italy]]
|bgcolor="{{party color|Italian Communist Party}}" |
|[[Italian Communist Party|PCI]]
|172,271
|{{tick|15}} '''Elected'''
|}

==Honours==
* Honorary degree, [[University of Hull]], 1984
* Honorary degree ''in memoriam'', [[University of Pavia]], 1988.
* Honorary degree, [[Loughborough University]], 1973

== See also ==
* [[Centre for Studies on Federalism]]
* [[European Federalist Movement]]
* [[Istituto Affari Internazionali]]

== References ==
* Piero S. Graglia, Altiero Spinelli, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008

{{reflist}}

== External links ==
{{commons category-inline}}
* [http://www.altierospinelli.it Web site of the Spinelli Committee for the celebrations of 100 years from his birth 1907–2007]
* The [http://archives.eui.eu/en/fonds/3610?item=AS private papers] of A. Spinelli deposited at the [http://www.eui.eu/Research/HistoricalArchivesOfEU/Index.aspx Historical Archives of the EU] in Florence 
* [http://www.jef-europe.net/federalism/archives/index.php?id=1624 A short biography from the Young European Federalists organisation]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050408162709/http://www.federalunion.org.uk/archives/ventotene.shtml Text of the Ventotene Manifesto]
* [http://www.geocities.com/europafederalisterna/vento_eng_I.htm Text of the Ventotene Manifesto] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20091025004227/http://geocities.com/europafederalisterna/vento_eng_I.htm Archived] 2009-10-25)
* [http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info/treaty/ Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210524024106/http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info/treaty/ |date=24 May 2021 }}
* [http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/Report1_Spinelli.html Agustín José Menéndez (ed.): Altiero Spinelli – From Ventotene to the European Constitution. Oslo 2007] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211028103954/http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/Report1_Spinelli.html |date=28 October 2021 }}
* [http://www.altierospinelli.org/ www.altierospinelli.org]

{{Authority control}}

{{European Commissioners from Italy}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spinelli, Altiero}}
[[Category:1907 births]]
[[Category:1986 deaths]]
[[Category:Eurofederalism]]
[[Category:European integration pioneers]]
[[Category:Italian anti-fascists]]
[[Category:Italian essayists]]
[[Category:Italian male essayists]]
[[Category:Italian male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Italian European commissioners]]
[[Category:Italian political philosophers]]
[[Category:Italian prisoners and detainees]]
[[Category:Italian resistance movement members]]
[[Category:Italian Communist Party politicians]]
[[Category:MEPs for Italy 1979–1984]]
[[Category:Writers from Rome]]
[[Category:Action Party (Italy) politicians]]
[[Category:20th-century Italian essayists]]
[[Category:European commissioners (1970–1972)]]
[[Category:European commissioners (1972–1973)]]
[[Category:European commissioners (1973–1977)]]
[[Category:Politicians from Rome]]