Communicating Europe

Introduction

Luciano TOSI

It is now widely acquired the awareness that the process of European unification is not a matter concerning exclusively (or mainly) the governments of the Member States and their foreign policy and diplomacy. This awareness has become even stronger in the post-bipolar world and in the gradual emergence of Europe as an autonomous subject of international relations. In the analysis of the process of European integration, of its crisis and of its raises, of its ideals and of its concrete achievements, it is not possible to ignore the role of civil society in its multiform variety of expression, from economics to politics, from social aspects to the cultural and religious ones.

The relationship between civil society and European integration process has been already analyzed in a previous conference organized by the Associazione universitaria di studi europei (AUSE-ECSA Italy), whose proceedings were published with the title Consensus and European Integration: An Historical Perspective by Peter Lang in this same collection.

The present work is an ideal extension of that first initiative, and contains the proceedings of the conference Communicating Europe. Journals and European Integration 1939-1979 organized by AUSE (with the support of the Action Jean Monnet, Lifelong Learning Programme) at the University of Perugia and Assisi from 2 to 4 May 2013.

The analytical perspective adopted in this conference reflects the desire to analyze one of the instruments through which the process of “socialization” of public opinion to the issues “European” has been developed.

Actually, the channels through which it was decided to “communicate” European integration to citizens are numerous, and – as far as their classification is extremely difficult – these channels can be categorized into i) “official” or “direct” (since they are activated by the ← 9 | 10 → Community or national institutions), as primarily designed to foster knowledge among the general public of the European Community/Union (its institutional structure, its policies, initiatives, so its “present”, but also its history, “the past”, and its objectives, “the future”), and ii) “unofficial”, that means that they are not specifically dedicated to informing citizens about the European Community/Union, even if they participate to the spread of a “European awareness” since they have been able to encourage reflection on the projects of unification and its different hypotheses of realization.

Among the key tools for the dissemination of different “visions of Europe”, there were the political and cultural journals; however, those economic and legal reviews developed and widely spread in the postwar period were no less important, thanks also to the return to the free debate of ideas in democracies in Western Europe.

The contributions in this volume examine, in particular, the debate on European unification developed between the end of World War I and 1979 (the year of the first direct elections of the European Parliament by universal suffrage) in two types of magazines: those not exclusively dedicated to the “European” themes, but particularly significant for the impact they had in the cultural-political debate and in the concrete unfolding of the process of European integration; and those militant magazines, belonging to the European and federalist area, whose proactive role was fundamental both for the theoretical elaboration of the ideas as the basis of the future of the European continent, and for the practical propaganda. All these publications contributed in different ways to the spread of knowledge of European integration, of its implications and of its political, social and economic consequences. No less important – and this is the third type of journals taken into consideration in the book – has been the birth and development of magazines directly sponsored by the Community institutions, whose action was framed within a real “European communication”, made by the EC institutions (particularly the Commission in Brussels) since their origins.

The set of essays published in this volume seems to present a character of undoubted originality. The papers help to fill a gap in ← 10 | 11 → historiography, since for the first time the theme of “European integration in journals” (and its implications for the knowledge of current Community between citizens) is tackled in a systematic way, with a wide range of interventions that deals with reviews belonging to different areas.

Effectively, journals are an interesting laboratory at least for two reasons: first of all they can measure in the examined period the capacity that the civil society had to be listened by the décideurs on the relevant topic such as the project of European unification; secondly, it is interesting to underline how in these journals positions even critical towards the way to realise the European Community were elaborated. Some of this critical positions (such as the renounce to political unification, the lack of involvement of the citizens, the prevalence of the economic aspect to the social dimension, etc.) are extremely important, both in an Europeanist view (which is addressed to the individuation of solutions for the deepening of the community ties among the member states), and for the comprehension of the reasons which the critical positions toward the policies of the European Union are based on.

The study of the political and cultural debate that accompanied the birth of the process of European integration can provide many reflections also on the topic of communication nowadays; topics such as the European citizenship and the need of diffusion of European informative canals were the first fixed points of the actions of federalists and Europeists.

Moreover, this is an increasingly relevant topic, as shown by some recent initiatives put in place by the European Union. In August 2004 the president of the European Commission, Barroso, assigned to the vice-president Margot Wallström the portfolio of the institutional relations and of the strategy of communication in order to improve the knowledge of Europe among the citizens. In October 2005 the Commission launched a deep reflection, the so-called Plan D, finalized to keep the interest for Europe by the citizens, through the development of the mean of communication and information. In February 2006 the White Book for a European Policy of Communication has been adopted ← 11 | 12 → and in October 2007 the communication entitled Together for Communicate Europe has been presented to the European parliament, to the Council, to the Social and Economic Committee, and to the Committee of Regions. The Commission has promoted a new approach for realizing a passage from a communication based on the institutions to a communication centred on the citizens. Frankly speaking it is a coming back to the origins.

The expected principal impact of this publication is an important deepening of the knowledge on a fundamental topic of the process of European integration. Indeed, if it is true that the process of European integration, especially in its beginnings, had been conceived by the political elites, it is true also that the public opinion cannot be considered only an irrelevant actor in the historical dynamics which led the Old Continent to the unification. ← 12 | 13 →

The Movements for European Unity Press

← 13 | 14 → ← 14 | 15 →

Culture, Politics, Information: The Newspapers of the Movements for European Unity

Daniela PREDA

The war and post-war period witnessed a widespread diffusion of unitary ideas in Europe. The ideas of peace, solidarity and cooperation inevitably developed from the crucible of the Resistance, which was in close contact with the devastation of the war and the totalitarian degeneration this brought to the national states. Often involved side by side in the common struggle against the Nazi-Fascist oppressors, many Resistance members found themselves beyond their own frontiers not only to coordinate their military action to ensure victory but also to study the means of building a federation of European states that would guarantee political stability, economic well-being and social progress on the Continent.

It was the war, with all the ruin it caused and its macabre trophies, which engendered in everyone, young and old alike, the thirst to engage in politics, the desire to work toward a renewal of society, providing them with a faith in national renewal and the exhilaration of those who feel themselves to be protagonists writing a new history. Faced with this catastrophe political thought freed itself of doctrines that could not keep pace with history, abandoned false, utopian solutions, and considered the ways to “construct” peace and a new prospective for dealing with the problems of international anarchy and the concept itself of statehood and its relation with the nation. On trial was nationalism, which recognized the state as the exclusive level of government, thus eliminating any possible political organization of the infra- and supranational communities.

In the war and post-war periods the idea of European unification began to take shape. In all countries there was an endemic flourishing of movements, writings, actions, newspapers, true constitutional ← 15 | 16 → projects, in which the United States of Europe was the objective, a vast, scattered constellation which even today historians have difficulty analyzing as a whole. This goal represented an ideal impulse that had only one meaning: Europe was in search of its unity;¹ an impulse that was idealistic but at the same time realistic, and which aimed at firmly linking itself with history. The collapse of the European system of states, the decline of Europe’s central role in the world, and the birth of bipolarity are all long-lasting factors that developed and forcefully emerged in the brief span of the Second World War. The post-war projects for European unification had the characteristic of being concrete, entering into the political struggle and influencing the objectives as well as the hopes and expectations of the populace. Thus what emerges from these documents is not a Europe far off in the future but a concrete objective to immediately struggle for and pursue, a historical moment to seize.

It is in this context of great cultural, political and, above all, intellectual ferment that the profusion of newspapers dealing with Europe should be placed. Within the vast spectrum of such newspapers are those of the movements for European unity, in which Europe is the dominant theme; the political and cultural periodicals, in which the theme of a European union appears at times frequently, at times sporadically; and the dailies,² which in most cases focus instead on the most “urgent” aspects of national reconstruction. ← 16 | 17 →

The present essay seeks to provide an initial, though not exhaustive, view of that part of the Italian press linked to the movements for European unity, hopefully laying the foundation for a more systematic study, which the Proceedings published in this volume aim to initiate.

The range of periodicals, newsletters and single issues linked to the movements for Europe unity is vast, as vast as the number of movements themselves. The first Europeanist newspapers began clandestinely and in an endemic manner (without links to one another) during the Resistance from a strong and immediate need for peace and for moving beyond the anarchy in Europe that had resulted in two world wars in the span of twenty years.

The first federalist periodical published during the clandestine period in Italy was L’Unità Europea, whose first issue appeared in May 1943.³ Below the title L’Unità Europea appeared these sentences:

At the end of this war, European unification will be an achievable and essential task. The division of Europe into national states is today the most dangerous enemy to man’s ability to delineate and solve his problems.⁴ ← 17 | 18 →

Similar views can be found during the war in other clandestine newspapers, such as the Dutch Het Parool and Vrij Nederland,⁵ the British federalist newsletter Federal Union, L’Action fédéraliste européenne, published in neutral Switzerland, and Italia Libera.

The second half of the 1940s represented a flourishing period both for the movements⁶ and for Europeanist and federalist publications. It is difficult to get an exact idea of their number and diffusion. After the launch of the Marshall Plan the idea of creating the United States of Europe by initiating in the West became a concrete possibility. And like all significant constituent occasions, this one was also full of planning, enthusiasm and passion. It is not unreasonable to compare this period with 1848 in Italy, which in turn was full of voluntary editorial initiatives.

Each of the movements for European unity that arose in that period availed itself, for more or less lengthy periods, of its own press organ, which often was sporadic and short-lived. Given the lack of financial resources and the voluntary nature of these initiatives, which often had to rely on self-financing, often there was only a one- or two-page, thin newsletter, which nevertheless sufficed to disseminate the ideals and ← 18 | 19 → aims espoused by the movement in question.⁷ These publications presented the peculiarities of every association not linked to the centers of power and which based its existence on the work of volunteers and militants. They existed when there were people convinced of the movement’s ideas who were willing to sacrifice their free time to the movement and its activities. They languished or even disappeared when this idealistic impetus and spirit of service was absent.

As an example, the Movimento Federalista Europeo (MFE) had as its press organs first L’Unità Europea⁸ and then, beginning in July 1947, Il Bollettino d’Informazione del MFE, published in Milan and edited by Guglielmo Usellini, and, from 1948, another monthly newsletter of the MFE, directed by Spinelli, which predated the birth of the Europa federata. At the beginning of 1948, the Movimento italiano di Federazione europea (MIFE) began publishing in Rome the bi-monthly United States of Europe, which circulated mainly in federalist circles in the South, under the direction of Antonio Scrimali. The Movimento autonomista di Federazion europea (MAFE), founded in Rome on May 8, 1945, by Guglielmo Usellini and Veniero Spinelli, created its own press organ in 1948, L’Italia Europea. The world groups in turn published their own press organs: Mondo Unito and Federalismo nel mondo.

With the start of the Community construction process, a large number of cultural journals appeared dealing with Europe, and even the attention from newspapers began to become more intense. It was a favorable moment for European unification, toward which the governments were busily working. In turn, the movements for ← 19 | 20 → European unity played a crucial role at that time as “prompters of principle”, as government advisers, and their efforts to culturally till the scarcely ploughed land of supranationality were fundamental. The press represented one of the most important means for carrying out this role with regard to both public opinion and the governments.

The political revolution proposed by the federalists cannot be separated from the cultural one. More effort and care in terms of typography were dedicated to the most important press organs of the movements, and there were in-depth analysis and comments, from a European and not simply national point of view, on general political events, which sought to provide alternative information to the readers.

In 1950 the Europa Federata, the organ of the Movimento Federalista Europeo,⁹ began publishing; in 1952 Comuni d’Europa appeared, which was the organ for the Associazione Italiana del Consiglio dei Comuni d’Europa,¹⁰ initially edited by Giovanni Russo and then for a long time by Umberto Serafini,¹¹ along with the Bulletin Européen, the newspaper of the Movimento Europeo, published in French and founded by Costantino Dragan and edited by Giorgio Del Vecchio;¹² in 1953 the periodical Gauche Européenne, the organ of the Movimento Socialista per gli Stati Uniti d’Europa,¹³ began to ← 20 | 21 → publish under the direction of Enrique Gironella; in 1955 Azione Federalista appeared, edited by Luciano Bolis; in 1957 Unieuropa, the organ of the Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europea, and Scuola d’Europa, the newspaper of the Association Européenne des Enseignants (AEDE);¹⁴ and in 1958, Popolo europeo, the organ for the Congresso del Popolo Europeo,¹⁵ began publishing in four editions (Italian, German, Dutch and French). In addition, there were those newspapers linked to the international movements; for example, the international newsletter of the Movimento Europeo Nuovelles de l’Europe. Among those published by the UEF¹⁶ and the supranational MFE was Informations Fédéralistes, Bulletin européen d’information, UEF Bullettin, Fédéralisme Européen; the German newspapers Europa Union, Europaische Zeitung, Der Foederalist; the Austrian Europa-Stimme; and the French La Fédération, edited by André Voisin, Bulletin de La Fédération, Le XX° siècle fédéraliste, L’Europe en formation, and Fédéchoses. ← 21 | 22 →

For its part, the activities of the young federalists was varied, multi-colored and full of hope and ideals: “official” press organs, such as those of the Campagna Europea della Gioventù: Jeune Europe, Jungen Europas, Young Europe, Giovane Europa, the bi-monthly edited by Ivo Murgia and published in 1954; or of the JEF: the Lettere al militante, the Bollettino di informazioni del Comitato direttivo nazionale giovanile del MFE. There were also local periodicals, such as Europa Nuova, published between 1954 and 1957 behind the efforts of the Piedmontese GFE and edited by Cesare Merlini; and single issues, such as Il Continente, a newsletter providing information on the youth groups of the MFE and edited by Ennio Di Nolfo, which appeared in 1948.

It should also be noted that the creation of the ECSC in 1953 was shortly followed by the birth of the first European press agency, L’Agence Europe, edited by the Genoese Emanuele Gazzo. Published in English, French and Italian, this daily newsletter would from then on play a fundamental role in spreading information and in time also provide concise editorials on daily events. Moreover, there were also supplements such as Europa/Documenti (with studies and official reports), Interpenetrazione economica (dedicated to enterprises), and Biblioteca europea (with reviews and information on books and journals dealing with Europe).

In 1955 the Associazione giornalisti per la federazione europea was founded in Rome, headed by Ugo La Malfa, with the objective of supporting the action of the federalist movements by using publicists in favor of continental unification. The Associazione giornalisti europei (AGE), the Italian section of the Association des Journalistes Européens (AJE), would be founded in Rome in 1961, along with its own press organ, L’Europa dell’opinione, edited by Enrico Serra.

After the failure of the EDC and the parallel failure of the project for a European political community, there was no longer the illusion that European unity could be achieved in the span of only a few years and only as a result of the action of the governments. In the new European panorama it was no longer possible to imagine a federalism limited to the role of a conscience for governments. As the ← 22 | 23 → governments had abandoned a more progressive European policy, it was necessary to switch to the role of opposition and work towards creating a European citizenship (the European people evoked by Spinelli), which, on the one hand, would have required a widespread organization, and on the other an effective theoretical underpinning.

It was understood that the unification process would be long and tortuous and that it could not be accomplished only through the governments, which represented both an “instrument and obstacle” with regard to the process. Thus there was need for a systematic reflection on the objectives and the means for achieving them, as well as a difficult effort for a cultural renewal of the federalist groups in order to overcome the traditional ideologies and gain support for a new culture whose focal point was, on the one hand, the “European people”, and on the other the concept of a crisis of the nation state, with its repercussions on the views toward domestic and foreign policy. A cultural deepening was needed that would define the characteristics, aims and strategies of a federalism that could not be confined to a simple institutional struggle.

This period saw the rise of more polished political-cultural periodicals that sought to give voice to this cultural renewal through the debate between militants and intellectuals. Among these, the most important, along with I quaderni della crisi, edited by Gianfranco Draghi, was Il Federalista, edited by Mario Albertini (in collaboration with Alessandro Cavalli, Giulio Guderzo and Ezio Lancellotti), which was the organ of the autonomist federalist policy school (a sort of Italian edition of the Föderalist), founded in June 1959 with the precious aid of the management group of the Gioventù federalista europea (GFE), elected at the congress at Castellammare di Stabia.¹⁷

Aware of the difficulty of the task, Albertini attributed fundamental importance to culture (“culture is the politics of tomorrow”, he loved to say) as the basis for political action and the means to engender moral ← 23 | 24 → energy that did not aim at immediate success and power. The relationship between culture and politics was clear to him: it was necessary to work toward a political culture in order for politics not to remain without any substance. The journal initially was published in Italian and German, with the collaboration of Klaus Schöndube; subsequently, beginning in 1962, it was also published in French, with an important contribution by the GFE. Today it is still published in Italian and English (since 1985). This promotional and cultural deepening role was entrusted, for a certain period of time (in particular, the initial period of the CPE) to Quaderni di rivendicazione, prepared in the offices of the CPE. With the demise of the CPE this periodical represented an occasion for federalists, led by Albertini, to meet and discuss issues before the founding of the “federalist autonomy” school. In fact, the newspaper’s office was practically the birthplace of this school.

Beginning in 1960, organized European federalism entered a moment of crisis. However, new broad-scoped journalistic initiatives arose. For example, those linked to Spinelli and the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI): The International Spectator (1965), EU (founded in 1969 by the merger of Popolo europeo and I Quaderni della crisi, and directed by Cesare Merlini). There were also initiatives linked to Albertini, with the objective of producing a deeper cultural analysis of the theoretical and practical problems of federalist strategy, undertaking a pre-political framework of action and reconstructing a federalist policy from the foundation on up: Informations de “Le Fédéraliste”, which preceded Il Giornale del Censimento (founded in 1965 to monitor the actions of the voluntary census-taking of the European federal populace), and Federalismo Europeo (created to support the struggle for the direct election of the European Parliament). Other interesting initiatives were “Lotta Federalista”, founded in Rome in 1962 under the direction of Attilio Dagnino; Evoluzione Europea, founded in Sondrio in 1964 and directed by Luigi Bisicchia; and Il Mezzogiorno e le Comunità europee (1962-1970).

Along with the official press organs there were regional newspapers which provided a voice to local groups, often with the intention of providing a deeper cultural analysis. Among others in this ← 24 | 25 → regard were the bi-monthly Rassegna Europea, published in Trieste and Udine from 1959 to 1970 under the direction of Orio Giarini, later joined by Guido Comesatti; the Sicilian periodical Sud Europa, dedicated to the inclusion of Sicily in the European integration process in the context of a regional approach; Milano federalist, PiemontEuropa, Veneto federalist, the Ligurian Sciopero europea, etc.

For the most part, those journals which dealt with European integration represented a lively, proactive and idealistic panorama which remains to be examined, one that clearly was a victim of a historiographical culture too centered on national developments while paying too little attention to understanding the new forces that the Second World War had unleashed. Yet it was also a victim of the difficulty in finding sources. From this point of view, the difficulty for historiography in dealing with such a vast and discontinuous production, mainly distributed inside the country and difficult to find, is understandable. Completely missing are “protected” archival institutional sources, and the documentation often has to be searched for in the cellars or attics of the main players in the European integration process (the more meticulous ones who attached importance to preserving historical memories). This documentation underwent relocation and family vicissitudes, and was often lost due to the indifference of heirs or the lack of space, but especially to the absence of an historical-archival project aimed at the preservation of these types of sources.

The aim of the Proceedings published here also goes in this direction: setting out the problem, undertaking studies, while at the same time engaging in a systematic recognition of the sources in the country that in future can permit more timely and broader-ranging research on the journalistic activity regarding the process of European unity. ← 25 | 26 → ← 26 | 27 →

1Einaudi is clear in this regard: “The First World War was the cruel manifestation of the instinctive European aspiration for unification; but since European unity could not be achieved through an impotent League of Nations, the problem immediately reappeared, and it could only be resolved in one of two ways: with the sword of Satan or that of God”. Luigi Einaudi, speech to the constituent assembly, July 29, 1947, in Id., La guerra e l’unità europea, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1986, pp. 45-46.

2Nineteen forty-four had already witnessed the appearence of Lo Stato Moderno, edited by Mario Paggi, and the periodical Europa, edited in Rome by Pier Fausto Palumbo, as well as the weekly La Nuova Europa (1944-1946), edited by Luigi Salvatorelli. In 1945 Mondo Europeo (1945-1949), edited by Antonio Milo di Villagrazia, began publishing in Rome; in 1947 this newspaper would become Il Mondo Europeo. The following year another periodical would enrich the Europeanist political debate: the bi-monthly Europa socialista (1946-1947), edited by Ignazio Silone (this newspaper would be continued starting in 1954 by Sinistra Europea (1954-1989), edited by Mario Zagari, and Iniziativa socialista per l’unità europea, which subsequently would become Iniziativa europea (1959-1974). In 1949 a newspaper was published of particular significance for the Italian press and with a clearly Europeanist orientation: Il Mondo (1949-1966), edited by Mario Pannunzio. Other newspapers of note are Comprendre, the organ of the European society of culture, edited by Umberto Campagnolo, Il Ponte, Nord e Sud, La Nuova Antologia, Risorgimento liberale, and the Catholic newspapers La Civiltà Cattolica, Humanitas and Idea.

3Between May 1943 and January 1945 eight clandestine issues were published of L’Unità Europea under the direction of Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Mario Alberto Rollier. The editorial work was entrusted to Guglielmo Usellini. After 1945 the periodical continued to be published under the direction of the Centro Piemontese of the EFM.

4L’Unità Europea, n. 1, May1943.

5“This war,” wrote the editor-in-chief of “Het Parool”, G. van Heuven-Goedhard in 1942, “should be considered as the great crisis in the sovereignty of states. If it is not to have been purposeless, it must lead to the European collaboration of states, which renounce part of their sovereign power in favor of a collectively-administered body […] a European community organ or a European Federation provided with the power to makes its will known and to impose it on the national states […) and which is capable of taking the crucial decisions as well as safeguarding the autonomy and self-government of the national states”. See M. Albertini, A. Chiti-Batelli, F. Petrilli, Storia del federalismo europeo, edited by E. Paolini, Rome, ERI, 1973, p. 101. See also H. Halin, L’Europe unie, objectif majeur de la Résistance, Bruxelles, ed. by l’URPE (Union des Résistants pour une Europe Unie), 1967, which presents a vast range of federalist documents published during the Second World War.

6See D. Preda, “Declino e rilancio del MFE tra fine della guerra e Piano Marshall”, in Plans des temps de guerre pour l’Europe d’après-guerre, edited by M. Dumoulin, Bruxelles, Bruyant, 1995, pp. 489-525.

7For a wideranging review of the federalist press, see S. Calissano, L’Europa in primna pagina. Il giornalismo europeista e federalista nel secondo dopoguerra. Le riviste federaliste ed europeiste in Italia. Dalla Resistenza sino alla fine degli anni Cinquanta, Centro Studi sul Federalismo di Torino, CSF Papers, March 2008.

8L’Unità Europea became the official organ of the Associazione Federalisti Europei (AFE), which was founded in Florence on January 27, 1945, by Piero Calamandrei and Paride Baccarini. Its members included Arturo Codignola, Giacomo Devoto, Antonio Milo di Villagrazia, Andrea Chiti-Batelli, Enzo Enriques Agnoletti and Carlo Morandi.

9The first issue of Europa federata had a circulation of almost 500 copies. A. Spinelli, Diario europeo 1948-1969, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989, 11 February 1949, p. 50.

10See F. Zucca, Autonomie locali e federazione sovranazionale. La battaglia del Conseil des Communs et Régions d’Europe per l’unità europea, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001; E. Paolini, “Il Consiglio dei Comuni d’Europa”, in I movimenti per l’unità europea 1954-1969, cit., pp. 261-287. On the Italian section of the Consiglio dei Comuni d’Europa, see AICCRE (Umberto Serafini), Breve storia del Consiglio dei Comuni e delle Regioni d’Europa nel quadro di due secoli di lotta federalista, Roma 1995.