The heritage of Ventotene: let's think big again for Europe

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19.09.2024 Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the European Commission

HRVP Blog - A few weeks ago, I returned to the Island of Ventotene, in Italy, where in 1941 a visionary manifesto "For a free and united Europe" was published. Many of those visions have become reality, but, in the current tense geopolitical context, much more needs to be done to strengthen our political union and reinforce our common foreign and security policy.

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At the beginning of September, on the Island of Ventotene, in the Gulf of Naples, I participated in the 43^rd edition of the seminar on Federalism in Europe and the World. Ventotene is the place, where the famous Manifesto "For a free and united Europe" was written in 1941 by Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli, who were among the founding fathers of modern Europe.

Before addressing the seminar, I inaugurated a beautiful artwork, a wall painting on the City Council building with the entire text of the Manifesto. I also attended a gathering to relaunch the Action Committee for the United States of Europe created by Jean Monnet in 1955. Openingthe seminar, I explored what had been achieved since 1941 in Europe, but also more importantly what remains to be done.

Make war impossible among Europeans

The Ventotene Manifesto was drafted at a time when Fascist armies were marching victoriously across Europe. It was visionary and proposed building a European federation to make war among Europeans impossible. Nine years later, with the Schuman Plan of 1950, work was set in motion to pool together coal and steel, the very ingredients of any war machine. During the following decades, Member States renounced key elements of sovereignty, giving way to a common market, a common currency and the freedom to travel all over Europe without a passport. Those are historic achievements, but the full promise of the Ventotene Manifesto remains unfulfilled.

We live in the most dangerous geopolitical world since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Maybe even since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the world came close to a nuclear apocalypse.

And we are going through a difficult time. War is back along our borders, and we live in the most dangerous geopolitical environment since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Maybe even since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the world came close to a nuclear apocalypse. In this increasingly hostile world, we cannot continue to just react to events. We have to become proactive, we have to develop a plan. We need to strive more than ever for a strong political union with an effective common foreign and security policy.

We have only just woken up to the hardship of this world

My experience of the last five years has taught me that we Europeans have only just woken up to the hardship of this world. After the failure of the European Defence Community in 1954, defence was not part of Europe's initial project. However, recently events have forced us to take action in this field. It will be the dominant issue in Europe in the coming years. We have already made some progress in building an EU foreign and security policy, which did not exist back in the 1950s, but we are still quite far from what is needed.

We need to pool much more EU resources if we want to be able to finance at the same time the green and digital transitions and to develop our defence capacities and boost our defence industry.

As the Draghi report has shown, we need to pool much more EU resources if we want to be able to finance at the same time the green and digital transitions and to develop our defence capacities and boost our defence industry. Like Alexander Hamilton during the American Revolution, we decided to create EU debt in 2020 to face the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of the war against Ukraine, this should not remain a one-off action. However, when Alexander Hamilton created common borrowing, he also created US federal taxes to repay this debt. So far, the EU has not done so. Creating debt is easier than creating taxes!

The need to get rid of the unanimity rule

We also need to change our decision making process. The EU is hamstrung by the unanimity rule for taxation, foreign policy and defence. One Member State is currently preventing the EU to give 6 billion euros in military support to Ukraine, a country that is facing heavy bombings every day. This is not acceptable if we want to build a political community able to defend our citizen and our values and interests. With 27 countries, the unanimity rule is already a heavy burden. After a new enlargement, with 37 countries, it would become unsustainable.

We need an alternative. The current Treaty allows to go over to Qualified Majority Voting for these policies. But only if we agree on that through a unanimous decision, which is very unlikely. In the end, even if this process is always difficult and risky, we will probably need to reform the Treaties. We could explore for instance the use of a supermajority rule of four-fifths.

Thinking big again about Europe

In short, while we have made progress, we still have a long way to go to realise the vision set by the Ventotene manifesto. To face the challenges of our time - from geopolitical tensions to the urgent need for green and digital transitions - we should not shy away from thinking big again, just like Ernesto Rossi and Altiero Spinelli did in the dark times of 1941.