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The Spinelli Group is an initiative founded with a view to reinvigorate the endeavour for federalisation of the European Union (EU), by creating a network of citizens, think tanks, NGOs, academics, writers and politicians who support the idea of a federal and united Europe. Among other goals, the Group aims to "find a federal majority [among members of the European Parliament] on important subjects." Founded on 15 September 2010 in the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, the group is named after Altiero Spinelli (1907–1986), founder of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and a founding father of the European integration.
The group was founded by Guy Verhofstadt, former head of the liberal Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group in the Parliament and honorary president of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) in Belgium, former co-chair of the Greens–European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) group Daniel Cohn-Bendit, French MEP Sylvie Goulard (ALDE) and former EP Vice President Isabelle Durant (Greens/EFA), with the support of the Union of European Federalists.
The Spinelli Group is not the first initiative launched in the European Parliament, gathering together followers of European federalism ideas. On 9 July 1980, the Crocodile Club a group of MEPs was founded by Altiero Spinelli himself. For more than 60 years, the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and its youth organisation Young European Federalists (JEF), with a "belief that only a European Federation, based on the idea of unity in diversity, could overcome the division of the European continent", [1] have been actively working to promote the idea of European federalism. MEP Andrew Duff and president of UEF has welcomed the launching of the Spinelli Group saying, that "existing federalist forces and organisations, such as the UEF and the Intergroup, welcome this new initiative". [2]
With a manifesto online, [3] recalling the Ventotene Manifesto written by Altiero Spinelli, Group activists call members of the European Parliament and Europe's citizens to sign it and add their names to the list of those fighting against nationalism and intergovernmentalism. By supporting the aims and principles laid out in the manifesto, Spinelli group followers try to speed up the process of European integration and promote a federal Europe.
The Spinelli Group is organised in three sections.
This pro-European initiative is supported by prominent political leaders such as former Commission President Jacques Delors, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, former competition commissioner Mario Monti and MEP Andrew Duff, President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF), and other well known public bodies. It is also enthusiastically supported by such European Union promoters as former European Parliament President Pat Cox and current Parliament Vice-President Isabelle Durant (Greens/EFA; Belgium). [4]
The 35 members of the Steering Group in 2010 were: [4]
The term federalist describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters call themselves Federalists.
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors was a French politician who served as the eighth president of the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. Delors played a key role in the creation of the single market, the euro and the modern European Union.
The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) is a political group of the European Parliament composed primarily of green and regionalist political parties.
Andrew Nicholas Duff is a British politician who presided over the Union of European Federalists (UEF) from 2008 to 2013. A member of the Liberal Democrats, he served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East of England from 1999 to 2014.
The European Movement International is a lobbying association that coordinates the efforts of associations and national councils with the goal of promoting European integration, and disseminating information about it.
The Union of European Federalists (UEF) is an international non-profit association originally founded in 1946 and refounded in 1973, promoting the advent of a European federal State based on the idea of unity in diversity. In 1946, it brought together a number of initiatives, particularly from the Resistance, aimed at creating a European federation, including the Movimento Federalista Europeo created the day after the fall of Benito Mussolini in Milan from 27 to 29 August 1943, under the impetus of the opponent Altiero Spinelli, among others, and the French Committee for the European Federation created in Lyon by members of the "Francs-tireurs" group in June 1944.
Altiero Spinelli was an Italian communist politician, political theorist and European federalist, referred to as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. A communist and militant anti-fascist in his youth, Spinelli spent 10 years imprisoned by the 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 socialists, drafted the manifesto For a Free and United Europe in 1941, considered a precursor of the European integration process.
The Crocodile Club was an informal group of members of the European Parliament (MEP) that favoured greater European integration, to the extent of a European federation, and greater powers to the European Parliament.
The European Federalist Movement was founded in Milan in 1943 by a group of activists led by Altiero Spinelli. The principles which inspired its foundation are contained in the Ventotene Manifesto, drawn up in 1941 by Spinelli himself, Eugenio Colorni, Ursula Hirschmann and Ernesto Rossi, and circulated by the in May 1943 circulated L'Unità europea periodical. Vayssière notes that the manifesto is widely seen as the birth of European federalism. Spinelli (1907–86), a former Communist, became a leader of the federalist movement due to his primary authorship of the Manifesto and his postwar advocacy. The manifesto called for a break with Europe's past to form a new political system through a restructuring of politics and extensive social reform. It was presented not as an ideal, but as the best option for the Europe's postwar condition.
The Ventotene Manifesto, officially entitled For a Free and United Europe. A Draft Manifesto, is a political statement written by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni, while they were imprisoned on the Italian islet Santo Stefano of the island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme of the Movimento Federalista Europeo. It called for a socialist federation of Europe and the world. In the text, European federalism and world federalism are presented as a way to prevent future wars. Vayssière notes that the manifesto is widely seen as the birth of European federalism. Spinelli, who was later elected to the European Parliament within the Italian Communist Party lists, became a leader of the federalist movement due to his primary authorship of the Manifesto and his postwar advocacy. The manifesto called for a break with Europe's past to form a new political system through a restructuring of politics and extensive social reform. It was presented not as an ideal, but as the best option for Europe's postwar condition.
Isabelle Annie J. Durant is a Belgian politician of the Ecolo party who served as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 2017 to 2021 and as acting Secretary-General of the organisation from 2021 to 2022.
Jean-Marc Ferry is a French philosopher who is best known for his book Les puissances de l'expérience (1991), described by Paul Ricoeur as "one of the most important works recently published in the field of social and political philosophy". He has also translated the work of Jürgen Habermas, by whom he was influenced, into French.
Sylvie Goulard is a French politician and civil servant who served as Deputy Governor of the Banque de France from 2018 to 2022.
Indrek Tarand is an Estonian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Estonia. He is an independent politician, but a member of the European Green Party.
Franziska Katharina Brantner is a German politician of the Green Party who has been serving as a member of the German Parliament since 2013.
The Centre for Studies on Federalism (CSF) was established in November 2000 with the primary purpose of studying and researching the theory and practice of Federalism both as a political doctrine and in its implementation in the institutional systems of the Modern state. CSF's main focus is on the infra-national, macro-regional and global scale of federalism: it specifically considers regional integration at a time of globalisation, with special reference to Europe, its history and civilization, its progress towards unification and its future.
The European Federalist Party is a European political party founded on 6 November 2011 in Paris. The EFP is one of the first European-oriented political parties that openly defends European federalism and is not a coalition of pre-existing national parties.
Europa-Union Deutschland e.V. (EUD) is the German section of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). It is a non-partisan, interdenominational and independent non-governmental organization advocating federal Europe. EUD's youth organization, Junge Europäische Föderalisten Deutschland is part of the Young European Federalists.
Daniel Marc Cohn-Bendit is a European politician. Born Stateless in a German-Polish Ashkenazi Jewish family, Daniel Cohn-Bendit obtained German citizenship in 1959 and French citizenship in 2015.
Roberto Gualtieri is an Italian historian, academic and politician of the Democratic Party (PD), incumbent Mayor of Rome since 2021 and Minister of Economy and Finances in the second government of Giuseppe Conte from 2019 until 2021. He previously was a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019, where he chaired the influential Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee within the Parliament from 2014 until 2019.