Year XXXVII, Number 2, July 2024

Pier Virgilio Dastoli
President of the European Movement in Italy (CIME)

On 14 February 1984, after two years of work in committees and in the Chamber, the first elected European Parliament approved by a large majority (237 yes, thirty-one no and forty three abstentions) the “Draft Treaty establishing the European Union”, thus concluding with a success - unexpected for some - the initiative launched by nine MEPs who had responded to a letter-appeal by the federalist leader Altiero Spinelli and who came from all the political groups of the Assembly.

Contrary to a widely-held opinion, the European Parliament’s project did not limit itself to the question of reforming the institutional system introduced in 1957 with the Treaties of Rome, but tackled all the problems of a Community founded on the idea – which proved to be wrong – that integration would gradually move from the market dimension to the economic and political dimension, according to the will, affirmed by the governments in Rome, to create “an ever closer union”.

This was not the case because the project for a European defence community had failed in 1954; the objective of an economic and monetary union with a single currency had been shattered in the early 1970s; the Communities were absent and silent on all international scenarios in a world still divided by the Iron Curtain, but already showing obvious cracks in the East; the Communities’ budget was unable to respond to the growing internal inequalities, despite the emergence of a modest regional policy; the European industrial system was incapable of reacting effectively to the challenges of global competitiveness, even though a common policy of research and new technologies were beginning to pay attention to the environment; and the problem of world hunger had become increasingly serious.

The European system, which in Jean Monnet’s initial logic should have been based on the central role of the Community public administration, had progressively and ineffectively divided itself into Community, para-Community and intergovernmental structures, and was unable to decide on its own destiny, also due to the marginal role the European Parliament had and the progressive marginalization of the European Commission, after the “heroic” phase of the Hallstein presidency.

In the view of the European Parliament, which had decided to play a leadership role despite the Treaty but counting on the strength of the citizen’s mandate, the challenges of the 1980s – which could not be effectively addressed by either the Community system, the Europe à la carte, or the Europe of intergovernmental cooperation, or the Europe of the Franco-German leadership, and ultimately by an essentially confederal system – were making evident the need for a European economic policy aiming to develop a genuine monetary union, a society policy (Willy Brandt’s Gesellschaftpolitik), a North-South policy, foreign policy and in particular the relations with the United States and NATO, the prospect of the enlargement of the Communities towards the north and south of the Continent, with the prospect that one day the borders could be opened up towards central Europe, and last but not least a European fiscal policy to finance common policies, breaking up the Council's obstructionism and inability to make decisions.

In order to achieve all this – and those who read us can easily compare the situation in the 1980s with the Europe of the 21^st century –, the idea of the majority of MEPs in the first legislature was that it was necessary to go beyond the treaties, but that it would be a dangerous illusion to rely on a “constitutional gradualism”, that is, asking governments to amend – inevitably with unanimous agreements in the Council and the unanimity of national ratifications – this or that article of the Treaties of Rome.

In fact, at the beginning of the constitutional adventure of the first European Parliament, three different positions were opposed in the political groups, as they are opposed today among the European political forces and among the pro-Europeans:

1- the conservative idea that the full potential of the existing treaties could still be exploited, and that the underlying problem was one of political will (or rather, the lack thereof), through which the dynamism inherent in the Community method could be restored

2- the apparently pragmatic idea that it would be possible to introduce amendments to the existing treaties, in order to extend the limited competences attributed to the European Economic Communities; to apply, where necessary, the principle of majority voting in the Council, thus overcoming the Luxembourg compromise or, today, the ineffective passerelle clause; to strengthen intergovernmental cooperation in international relations, and to recognise the elected European Parliament's legislative and budgetary powers, alongside the Council, while accepting the principle that the governments would remain the “owners of the treaties”

3- the idea, which then prevailed in the Committee on Institutional Affairs and then in the Chamber, that the only pragmatic way for the Communities to determine their own destiny was to draw up a new treaty, redefining the objectives of European integration within the framework of a reform based on the search for effectiveness, while respecting democracy.

The final text of the European Parliament's draft - first drafted and approved on 14 September 1983 in the form of a political report, and then on 14 February 1984 in the form of a “draft treaty establishing the European Union”, to which contributed the work of four influential lawyers (Capotorti, Hilf, Jacqué and Jacobs) - was the fruit of a democratic compromise between Christian popularism, socialist (and Italian communist) internationalism, liberal cosmopolitanism (and Italian radicalism), but also the pro-European pragmatism of the British conservatives.

Leaving to the reading of the 1984 Draft the political, legal, and cultural curiosity of discovering the relevance today of the initiative of the first elected Parliament, in the context of today’s debate on the future of Europe, we would like to draw the attention of our readers to two decisions taken on that 14 February that made it possible to assemble a large majority in the Chamber:

- the treaty would be a “project” to be brought to the consideration of the national parliaments, and, based on their comments, the Parliament elected in 1984 would debate, draft and adopt a final text, to be submitted for national ratifications, thus avoiding the obstacle of an intergovernmental conference

- if the agreement of a majority of the member States whose populations represented two- thirds of the total population of the European Communities was reached, the treaty would not come into force immediately, but the governments of the States that had ratified it would meet immediately, and decide on the procedures and the date of its entry into force; they had to decide also on the relations with the States that had not given their agreement.

We are convinced that the next European Parliament, building on the results of the Conference on the Future of Europe, shall adopt the method chosen by the assembly on 14 February 1984, so that the Union shall be able to take its destiny into its own hands.