Lecture Altiero Spinelli 2006
TOMMASO PADOA-SCHIOPPA debates about "Mancanze d'Europa"
Anyone who lovesEurope and has made its political union a calling of his own life as a citizen, owes an immense debt to Altiero Spinelli. In this historical moment, that debt looks even greater because it has become urgent to pose ourselves the question that constitutes the key point of his thought and political action: the necessity of the passage, constitutional and institutional, to European federalism. Like Jean Monnet, Spinelli believed that growing interdependence among States would make the birth of the United States of Europe unavoidable. This grand vision, which he constantly pursued and never separated from his political action, is currently as topical and necessary as ever. It is essential to ask ourselves what lies behind the difficulties troubling European society and its citizens today, and what direction we must take to try to overcome them. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa sets out to discuss these difficulties, which are often said to be the reasons obstructing the decisive steps towards the completion of Europe's political unity. The well-known economist denounces an “absence of Europe”, meaning the Union's insufficient decision-making capacity; an insufficiency that discourages new, and essential, initiatives. Hence widespread uneasiness and dispiritedness experienced by Europeans in facing the challenges of our time, their dissatisfaction with the community action, their growing distrust in the unification project. Today, the deficiencies of the European Union and its inability to act and solve the problems troubling our society constitute, for many people, sufficient reason for abandoning the project of a politically united Europe. But the cause of the deep-rooted feeling of impotence and detachment from the events of today's world is not the deficiencies of Europe; it is the absence of Europe. Confusing its deficiencies -the mistakes, the shortfalls, the contradictions- with its absence is generating a spiral of growing disappointment and disengagement, which constitutes the mortal danger the entire European society is facing today.
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Discusser: Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, January 17th 2007
University of Turin, Aula Magna, Via Verdi 8 - Turin
Anyone who lovesEurope and has made its political union a calling of his own life as a citizen, owes an immense debt to Altiero Spinelli. In this historical moment, that debt looks even greater because it has become urgent to pose ourselves the question that constitutes the key point of his thought and political action: the necessity of the passage, constitutional and institutional, to European federalism. Like Jean Monnet, Spinelli believed that growing interdependence among States would make the birth of the United States of Europe unavoidable. This grand vision, which he constantly pursued and never separated from his political action, is currently as topical and necessary as ever. It is essential to ask ourselves what lies behind the difficulties troubling European society and its citizens today, and what direction we must take to try to overcome them. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa sets out to discuss these difficulties, which are often said to be the reasons obstructing the decisive steps towards the completion of Europe's political unity. The well-known economist denounces an “absence of Europe”, meaning the Union's insufficient decision-making capacity; an insufficiency that discourages new, and essential, initiatives. Hence widespread uneasiness and dispiritedness experienced by Europeans in facing the challenges of our time, their dissatisfaction with the community action, their growing distrust in the unification project. Today, the deficiencies of the European Union and its inability to act and solve the problems troubling our society constitute, for many people, sufficient reason for abandoning the project of a politically united Europe. But the cause of the deep-rooted feeling of impotence and detachment from the events of today's world is not the deficiencies of Europe; it is the absence of Europe. Confusing its deficiencies -the mistakes, the shortfalls, the contradictions- with its absence is generating a spiral of growing disappointment and disengagement, which constitutes the mortal danger the entire European society is facing today.
Download Lecture »
About the Author »