Union of European Federalists - History

History

The foundation of the UEF goes back to the meeting of 78 representatives of federalist movements from 16 European countries in September 1946 in Hertenstein, near Zürich in Switzerland. These groups had in common that they believed that only a European federation based on the idea of unity in diversity could prevent a repetition of the suffering and destruction of the two world wars, so they adopted a declaration-programme which was based on this idea. Federalists believed that only a common effort of European citizens working towards this goal could create a peaceful and democratic Europe guaranteeing freedom and the protection of human rights. At a second meeting in Luxembourg these groups agreed on establishing a permanent European secretariat in Paris and another one in New York for global federalists. But it was in Paris, on December 15 and 16 1946 that UEF was officially brought into life its function being to co-ordinate and intensifies the activities of the different movements and to organise them into a federal structure.

After getting a legal status UEF campaigned for the European Federal Pact. It consisted of an attempt to transform the Advisory Assembly of the Council of Europe into the Constituent Assembly of the European Federation. The fundamental tool was a petition, signed by thousands of citizens of Europe and a large number of eminent persons in political, intellectual and scientific life, which asked the Advisory Assembly to draw up a text for a federal pact, and recommend its ratification to the member states of the Council of Europe. UEF also campaigned for the ratification of the European Defence Community and for the establishment of a political community.

After rejection of the EDC project the federalists became increasingly divided as to the strategy to be followed by the U.E.F. between those who, following Altiero Spinelli (1907–1986), favoured the constitutional approach, and those who preferred a step-by-step approach. The former could not be satisfied with a mere common market; the latter fully supported it. This conflict led to a split of the UEF in July 1956 and its division into two organizations: the "Mouvement Fédéraliste Européen" (M.F.E.), formed from militants of the former constitutional persuasion, and the "Action Européenne Fédéraliste" (A.E.F.) bringing together those of the latter.

But once the customs union had been established, bringing with it the prospect of developing into an economic and monetary union, the two federalist organizations came to agree on the desirability of coming together to relaunch their political activities, built around the campaign for direct elections to the European Parliament. This strategic idea, propounded by the Italian federalists, quickly became the joint platform of all the federalist organizations that met in April 1973, thus recreating UEF.

The next most important activities of UEF were a lot of public demonstrations attracting thousand of participants. For example the demonstration in conjunction with the European Council in Rome in December 1975, where it was decided that the European election would be held even without the participation of Great Britain and Denmark (although in the end, they did take part), a demonstration with 5,000 participants in Strasbourg on July 17, 1979 in front of the seat of the European Parliament, to coincide with its first session after its election in June the demonstration coinciding with the European Council in Fointainebleau on June 25, 1984 and the spectacular demonstration in Milan – its 100,000 participants make it the biggest popular demonstration in the history of the federalist struggle – in conjunction with the European Council of June 28 and 29 1985, where the majority decided to call an Intergovernmental Conference to review to Community treaties.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the cold war, the German reunification and the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty let to the UEF campaign for European Democracy which included eliminate border controls between the countries of the European Union, parallelism between widening and deepening, strengthening of the roles of the European Parliament and the European Commission, extension of majority voting and the removal of governmental monopoly over the constituent function. The most important part of the history of UEF in the last decade was the Campaign for the Federal European Constitution in Nice in which 10,000 people, including hundreds of local administrators, participated.