Altiero Spinelli

Nationality

Italy

Date of Birth

1907

Date of Death

1986

Political
Preference

Independent Left/Communist/Federalist

Altiero Spinelli was an Italian politician and political theorist. Born in Rome, Spinelli joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) at an early age to oppose Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. He was arrested in 1927 after he had opposed Mussolini’s regime as a journalist and PCI member and interned in the Italian island of Ventotene, and expelled from the communist party in 1937. During his incarceration in Ventotene, Spinelli met fellow prisoner Ernesto Rossi and together they compiled the so-called Ventotene Manifesto in 1941.

The manifesto is critical of national sovereignty and calls for a European federation to break economic autarchies. This manifesto was the founding document of the European Union of Federalists (UEF).

After the War, Spinelli played a key role in European integration, advocating supranational integration. He aimed to move further than the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), the Council of Europe, or the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). To this end he pushed for organizing an assembly that would draft a European Constitution. An ad hoc assembly was established in 1952-1953 under chairmanship of Henri Spaak to this end. Via the European Movement, he contributed to the drafting of a Treaty for a European Political Community by this ad hoc assembly, which would be a federal structure to oversee both the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Coal and Steel Community. With the failure of the ratification of the EDC this plan for a European Political Community was abandoned as well.