Ventotene Manifesto

The Manifesto of Ventotene (actually by un'Europa libera e unita. Progetto d'un manifesto, German For a free and united Europe. Projects a manifesto ) is a programmatic essay written in 1941 by the Italian anti-fascists Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, in which they designed the ideal of European federalism. The manifesto describes the sovereignty of nation states as the cause for the Second World War and therefore calls for the preservation of peace and freedom, the establishment of a European federal state, by a revolutionary movement. At the same time, the manifesto of socialist and communist economic concepts is influenced. It is one of the most important early programmatic designs of European integration.

Origin and Meaning

The Ventotene Manifesto was written on the Italian island of Ventotene of the anti-fascists Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni in their captivity. All three were arrested from about 1939 together on the island of Ventotene in the Gulf of Gaeta ( between Rome and Naples) and sat there with the concepts of European federalism apart as British since the 1920s about by the Pan-European Union and the Federal Union had been designed.

Principal author of the manifesto was Spinelli who formulated the text and secretly wrote down on cigarette paper. Eugenio Colorni, who was released in 1941, could participate in the content until then. Ursula Hirschmann, wife of Eugenio Colorni, to bring out the previously divided into four sections manifest, hidden in the belly of a fried chicken from prison succeeded. The sections were reproduced and published in Rome as leaflets. While the initials AS for ( Spinelli ), ER were specified for Ernesto Rossi as authors. With a foreword by Colorni the manifesto was further reproduced in its entirety in the period that followed and in January 1944 under the title "Problems of the European federation " along with two other essays Spinelli ( "The United States of Europe and the various political tendencies " and " Marxist policy and federal policy ", written 1942/43 ) in Rome put into circulation.

From 27 to 28 August 1943, after the relief of Italy by the Allied forces and the release of Spinelli and Rossi, an organized meeting by the Spinelli Italian anti-fascists took place in Milan. Here, the Movimento Federal Ista Europeo (MFE ) was established, which programmatically based on the manifest. The manifesto also influenced the 1946 European federalists different countries worked out Hertensteiner program that was already formulated clearly less radical but in some points.

Content

The manifesto originally consisted of four parts, which were regrouped in the edition of 1944 by Colorni to three parts. During the first and second part ( "The crisis of modern civilization " and " tasks of the postwar period, European integration ") and the second half of the third part ( "Tasks of the post-war period: The restructuring of society " ) primarily by the Spinelli come, is the first half of the third part written mainly by Ernesto Rossi.