The Ventotene Manifesto is the common name of a document originally called "Per un'Europa libera e unita. Progetto d'un manifesto" (Italian for "For a free and united Europe. Project of a manifesto"), written by the Italian intellectuals Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi while they were prisoners on the Italian island of Ventotene during World War II. Completed in June 1941, the Manifesto was circulated within the Italian Resistance, and it soon became the programme of the Movimento Federalista Europeo. The Manifesto encouraged a federation of European states, which was meant to keep the countries of Europe close, thus preventing war.
Historical background
editSpinelli was the leader of a local section of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in Rome. In 1927 he was arrested, according to the laws against the political opposers of the fascist regime that then ruled Italy.
Spinelli spent his time in jail till 1937 (in that same year he was expelled by the PCI, because he was openly against Stalin's regime in Russia), when he was interned in the island of Ponza and then, in 1939, in Ventotene. There he met others anti-fascist intellectuals, like Ernesto Rossi, Eugenio Colorni, Ursula Hirschmann.
Alongside Rossi and Colorni, Spinelli analysed the political and social situation in Europe at the time of World War II, and elaborated the theory of European Federalism that was depicted in the Manifesto.
Contents
editThe Manifesto was written in 1941, when the situation of the War was still in favour of the German army, and is divided into three parts:
- The crisis of modern civilisation
Effects
editCurrent presence in politics
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