CINZIA ROGNONI VERCELLI

La  prima organizzazione internazionale dei federalisti: l'UEF

N. 157

Summary — Risen more or less during the "Resistenza" on the assumption that European unity would amount to the answer not only to the problem of peace, but also to the economic failure and to the social tensions that tore Europe, various federalist Movements, after the preliminary meetings of Bāle, Hertenstein and Luxemburg, founded in Paris in December 1946 the UEF. The objectives and the structure of the organization were defined in the course of the Central Committee of Amsterdam (11th-16th August 1947) and of the Congresses of Montreux (27th-3lst August 1947) and of Rome (6th-11th November 1948). During the first years of the fifties the most significative actions were the campaign for the Petition of a federal union Pact and the struggle for the ratification of the CED. Fallen the CED and exhausted the possibility of founding the European State starting from the problem of the German sovereignty, a contrast emerged stronger and stronger within the UEF between the federalists of Spinellian inspiration, who proposed an attitude of firm opposition to the functionalist integration and reaffirmed the constituent principle, and those who supported the Common Market. This led in 1956 to the breaking of the UEF, and in 1959 to its substitution with the supernational European Federalist Movement. But, with the end of the temporary period of the Common Market, arose, more clearly than ever, the exigency of a political revival of the unification. The direct election of the European Parliament, promoted by the Italian federalists, became thus the common platform of all the federalist organizations, which in 1973 reunited, giving newly life to the UEF.