Crocodile: letters to the Parliaments of Europe founded by Altiero Spinelli (1980-1995)
On 9 July 1980, Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) brought together at the ‘Crocodile’ restaurant in Strasbourg eight MEPs who had accepted his appeal: ‘the Community must reform or perish’.
This was the birth of the ‘Crocodile Club’, whose action, conducted in particular through the ‘Letter to the Members of the European Parliament’ in the early 1980s, led to the European Parliament's approval in 1984 of the draft Treaty on European Union, which had a major influence on developments in the European integration process.
This is the complete version of the ‘Letter’ that took its name from that very club, from the first issues (1980-1981), to those of 1991-1992, and 1993-1995 and it is a Open Didactic Resources produced by CeAS (Center of Excellence Altiero Spinelli), in collaboration with CIME (Consiglio italiano del Movimento Europeo) and the Historical Archives of the European Union.
The Crocodile letters: 1980-1983 [1] | 1991-1992 [2] | 1993-1995 [3]
The process of European integration, which started with Robert Schuman's declaration (written by Jean Monnet) on 9 May 1980, has gone through periodic crises. Until 1980, the crises ended with solutions that allowed a leap forward in the logic and continuity envisioned by the Community method.
At the beginning of 1980, the Community was in crisis for many reasons and in particular for:
- An institutional crisis between the European Parliament and the Council over the size and quality of the European budget
- An economic crisis, which affected the competitiveness and growth of the EC member states in a globalised world
- A political crisis, which affected relations between East and West.
The European system, born with the 1957 Treaties of Rome, appeared inadequate to get out of these contemporary crises, but no national government and the Commission led by the inconsistent Luxembourger Gaston Thorn had shown that they were aware of this inadequacy and had even responded with contempt to the European Parliament's request to give fiscal capacity to the EMS (the forerunner of the EMU) by confirming an asphyxiated European budget and recognising the legitimacy of Margaret Thatcher's British blackmail ‘I want my money back’.
The European Parliament was chosen directly by the citizens for the first time in June 1979, a full twenty-one years after the entry into force of the Treaties of Rome which had provided for election by universal suffrage, introducing an embryo of representative democracy.
The vast majority of elected members did not think about the possibility of the assembly taking on a constituent role during the legislature, i.e. of going beyond the treaties to propose their revision.
Instead, they believed that there was still much potential in the treaties that could be exploited by the European institutions.
The clash in December 1979 between the Parliament and the Council over the following year's budget, its amount and the quality of its expenditure, which ended in May 1980 with the Council's victory (with the help of the Thorn Commission), however, made clear the inconsistency of the role of an assembly locked in almost exclusively consultative functions.
The shift from evidence to an act of parliamentary-political will was not, however, a foregone conclusion, as was demonstrated in June 1980 by the debate in the plenary on the Council's agreement on the budget and the European Council's mandate of 30 May 1980 to the Commission ‘without questioning either the financial responsibility for European policies or the fundamental principles of the CAP... to prevent unacceptable situations arising’ for any of the member states (=United Kingdom).
This step would not have been possible if there had not been, among the MEPs, Altiero Spinelli elected as an independent in the lists of the PCI with a programme of his own consistent with the constitutional and constituent choices that he had unsuccessfully attempted to have adopted by the European Commission in the context of the debate sparked five years earlier by the Tindemans Report.
This is how Spinelli had described the European situation on 21 June: ‘the existence of common problems is admitted; the need to provide common answers to them is recognised; the ability to formulate these answers in a European political entity and a European administrative entity exists, but the procedure makes it difficult if not impossible to elaborate a European conception and form a European consensus, while the procedure enhances national preparations and favours the formation of internal consensus on the problems’.
Founded on what we might call Cartesian thinking, Spinelli indicated the essential content of the project, method and agenda in his speech.
The speech did not arouse much interest because the majority of Populars, Socialists and Liberals were concerned about the risk of calling into question the difficult agreement reached between governments where - with varying majorities - all three political families were present here and there.
This forced Spinelli to turn his speech into a letter that was sent on 25 June to all MEPs,
This letter launched the constituent and constitutional action that, passing through the Crocodile Club, would lead the European Parliament to approve the draft Treaty establishing the European Union on 14 February 1984.
There is an extensive bibliography on the history of the Club and the Treaty and, most recently, the Institute of European Studies of the Free University of Brussels has updated and re-published the commentary edited by the four jurists (Capotorti, Jacqué, Hilf, Jacobs) with a preface by Jean-Victor Louis, an afterword by Giorgio Napolitano and a long essay by ULB Rector Marianne Dony devoted to the possible sequels of the Spinelli Project ("Le traité instituant l'Union européenne: un projet, une méthode, un agenda' Ed. Université de Bruxelles 2014).
We dedicate this note to the communication tool adopted by Spinelli to make the constituent action of the European Parliament discussed, known and disseminated: ‘Crocodile: letter to the members of the European Parliament’.
The letter, conceived by Spinelli, Ippolito and Dastoli in the summer of 1980, came out with its first issue on 12 October 1980, initially in French and English and then translated into German, Italian, Greek and Dutch.
Ten more issues were to be published in all:
- in December 1980 with the club's resolution, the reasons for the initiative and a critique of the motives of those who still believed in the potential of the treaties;
- in January 1981 with the state of accessions and the reasons for strengthening the powers of the EP
- in March 1981 with a criticism of the reticence of the EPP,
- in June 1981 with the example of Machiavelli,
- in September 1981 in the new version drawn up by Sergio Ruffolo with the Club's first success in the Chamber and an analysis of the subject of European defence,
- in December 1981 with a criticism of the modest Genscher-Colombo proposal and a reflection on the 1982 budget,
- in May 1982 with a detailed report on the work of the Institutional Affairs Committee,
- in June 1982 with the preparation of the (still uncertain) vote of the House on the guidelines of the Institutional Affairs Committee,
- in October 1982 with the proposal of a ‘new Messina’, a pladoyer in favour of Spain and Portugal, variable geometry Europe and again European defence,
- and finally in June 1983 with the preparation of the vote in plenary on the content of the Draft Treaty (which took place on 14 September 1983 ) and its legal and institutional legitimacy.
Seven months later the Club would achieve full parliamentary success with the approval of the Treaty establishing the European Union by a large majority.
The letter, initially addressed to MEPs, quickly became an instrument of propaganda and action aimed at dozens of national MPs, also spreading to federalist and pro-European circles with a circulation that reached over ten thousand copies.
Printed in the printing house of the Belgian Communist Party's newspaper in Brussels, it was originally financially supported by Spinelli, Ippolito and Dastoli, but the publishing success forced the trio of the ‘publishing house’ to create an administrative structure (managed by Dastoli and Viviane Schmit) with a subscription service, a limited liability company, payment of VAT to the Kingdom of Belgium and cost shares in the various currencies of European and non-European countries).
The search for institutional and private sponsors had in fact ended in defeat, entrusting the magazine's survival to the contributions of militants.
After Spinelli's death (23 May 1986), nine MEPs, from different countries and groups, decided to set up a federalist inter-group for the European Union, entrusting Dastoli with the role of secretary general and promoting the creation of similar inter-groups in Italy, Belgium, France and Germany with varying political results: excellent in Italy where the initiative for a consultative referendum on the constituent mandate to the EP was born, then combined with the European elections of June 1989, and modest or almost null in the other countries.
The inter-group, born on 9 July 1986 six years after the birth of the Crocodile Club, survived until the birth of the Spinelli Group in September 2009 and then merged into its parliamentary network, but with a role that gradually faded in parallel with the evaporation of the EP's constituent will despite the prospect opened up in 2001 with the Convention on the future of the Union decided at the Laeken European Council in December 2001.
With the Federalist Intergroup and seizing the opportunity of new technologies (first the fax, then computers), an association ‘Crocodile Club’ registered in Brussels was formed with a group of individual members supported by FIIGS (Federalist Intergroup Support).
In 1988, the association relaunched the Crocodile ‘Lettera’ with a new A4 format in French, English and Italian, devoting five years and fifty editorial issues to European current affairs from the Maastricht Treaty to the Amsterdam Treaty and to the knowledge of the most important policies of the European Communities, thanks to the financial support of DGX (Directorate-General for Information of the European Commission).
The ‘Letter’ and the association also promoted two opinion polls throughout Europe from 1988 to 1991 in cooperation with Eurobarometer, publishing the results exclusively in the major European newspapers (Le Monde, Le Soir, La Repubblica, Times, Die Welt, El Pais).
All the Crocodile's letters and poll results can be consulted in the ‘Spinelli and Dastoli Private Archives’ kept in the Historical Archives of the European University Institute.
by Pier Virgilio Dastoli