Reading the statements and articles from the "Association for a Tax on Financial Transactions to Aid the Citizen" (ATTAC) on the recently adopted so called Reform Treaty of the EU, I wonder, once again, why they make no reference to "the Spinelli Project". (See, for instance, the article from Attac France at http://www.france.attac.org/spip.php?article7969).

The efforts of ATTAC and others to build "another Europe" can succeed only when we take over the heritage from the original Eurofederalists, who wanted to put an end to the wars that had emanated from our continent. And who, in February 1984, already gave us a viable constitutional model for the EU.

The Spinelli Project, as that model used to be called, was adopted by a big majority of the European Parliament. That draft constitutional treaty of the EU needs, of course, to be amended and updated to the the age of the "Wealth of Networks". Yet it continues to shine in bright contrast to the bureaucratic gibberish of the document that the market fundamentalists signed in Lisbon the other day.

The European Union itself continues to be condition number one. But that EU is not about economic competition with and pillage of the rest of the world.

Condition number two is European Nuclear Disarmament (END), which should be inscribed in the EU constitution. The mentally sane part of the European "civil society", guided by independently thinking intellectuals, already understood to take this road in the 1980ies. Continuing the nuclear armaments and the nuclear proliferation in the post cold war age of the Internet and the globalisation (as the British and the French governments indeed are doing with the silent consent and support from the corporations and their colleagues in the other EU-countries), is nothing but a crime against humanity. Justice, whereby this crime against humanity is condemned, must begin in Europe. We have seen, in the 1980ies, that millions of citizens can be ready to engage themselves in campaigns for END, once they wake up from their life-dangerous slumber and apathy. To this necessary task we all have to reawaken. If we choose to turn a blind eye to it, history cannot but judge us, too, as criminals. If here will be any history left to judge us, that is.

A member of an ATTAC chapter in Central Europe sent me a couple of questions. Below, please find his questions plus my answers and comments:

1. The European Parliament adopted the Spinelli Draft in 1984 - and what happened then? Was it adopted also by the Council? Did it entry in force? Until when?

Answer: The Council did not adopt the draft. It never entered into force.

Comment: In 1985, the Council initiated the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC) and in 1986 it adopted the Single European Act. The Single European Act, however, was a kind of enlarged free trade agreement. This was clearly something else than the 1984 Treaty, which had been initiated and adopted by the European Parliament.

2. Which do you consider - besides being short and not mentioning the NATO - the strongest advantages of the Spinelli-Treaty over the Lisbon Treaty?

Answer: Starting with its preamble, the 1984 EU treaty is republican and democratic in spirit; as a consequence, it is also a readable and comprehensible document. The treaty of 1984 limits itself to a description of the institutions of the EU and the procedures for decision-making; thus it leaves broad margins for the definition and implementation of policies with variable economic and political content.

Comment: This is a big advantage over the treaty from Lisbon, which sets narrow limits for the internal policies and the external relations of the EU.

2b. I found that the Parliament is part of the "budget authority" Does this mean that it had the right to establish a budget? or just adopt the proposal from the Commission? Is this different from the today's EU?

Answer: The parliament has the right to participate in the establishment of the budget. The budgetary procedure is described in article 76. (http://www.spinellisfootsteps.info/treaty/doc.html#367) The Parliament cannot be said to have the right to establish the budget alone.

Comment: Present EU budget-making is to some extent determined precisely by the fact that the EU lacks a constitution, which is why it is not yet really a political union. Of course, even if/when the EU finally succeeds in adopting a constitution and thus in becoming a real federation, things may not turn out as they should. A constitutional treaty cannot be much more than a set of principles and procedures. In reality, much will depend on how its provisions are interpreted, enforced and followed. For instance, the significant first provision of article 74 about financial programs, which obliges the Commission to "report on the division between the Union and the Member States...", can obviously be interpreted in many different ways.

2c. How about the social policies (and taxation): are they larger than the today´s competences of the EU?

Answer / Comment: The 1984 would have enabled more harmonization of social and fiscal policies than the treaty of 2004 and the reform treaty of Lisbon make possible, because of the Neoliberal bias of the latter, which implies a tendency to minimize taxation and abolish social policies.

In my view, the Spinelli project provides us with a good example and model. But in our new situation (post cold war, eurozone, internet, "globalisation", etc) the text from 1984 may indeed need revision and reformulation.