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In the last episode we mentioned the fact that the European Community, which up to 1980 was composed of 9 countries, expands towards the Mediterranean area. The first country to become a new member state is Greece, which was finally free from the colonels’ regime. In the previous years, the colonels had made a putsch and imposed their dictatorship; afterwards, their regime collapsed, also thanks to the impact of the international public opinion and especially thanks to the pressure exerted by Europe, that had decided to interrupt its political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and social relationships with the colonels’ regime. Greece (among the other things, we remind you that Greece is- in someway- the cradle of democracy in Europe, since the word "democracy" derives from Greek, according to which the power belongs to people) becomes a member state of the European Community on 1st January 1981. But the membership of Greece, that is a relatively small country compared to some other big countries, such as France, Germany and Italy, highlights the relationship of the European Community with the Mediterranean countries and in particular with the member states coming from the South, that are weaker from an economic point of view. Therefore, the European Community feels the need to set up some special programs to allow these regions to overcome the gap and to be less far from the economic system of northern Europe countries. In this context, we can see the birth of the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes (IMP), for which also Italy gets some substantial contributions and the regional policy of the European Community is consolidated too. In the same lapse of time, the European Parliament- as we mentioned in the last episode- launches a big “constituting” operation, which is the "Treaty Project constituting the European Union". This operation is launched in the European Parliament by Mr. Spinelli, thanks to an initiative that was called the "Crocodile Club", from the name of the restaurant in which the deputies that decided to support Spinelli’s initiative met for the first time. After some long efforts, this initiative ends with a project whose fundamental aspects we can find today in the European Constitution. These are aspects concerning the strengthening of the Parliament’s role, the strengthening of the Commission and above all the expansion of the functions, that are no more in each individual country’ hands, but fall within the European Union’s competence. But who was Altiero Spinelli? He was one of the fathers of Europe, together with De Gasperi, Spaak, Adenauer, Schuman and Jean Monnet. Spinelli had been a young communist, he had moved away from the communist party (to tell the truth, he had been expelled from it, because he was against the Soviet regime) and, when he was interned in Ventotene, he had worked out the text of the manifesto of Ventotene, which turned around the idea according to which the only way to create a peace area in Europe was to go beyond the national frontiers, the national countries and to create a big European federation of states. The so-called “Treaty Project constituting the European Union” we have been speaking about, represents- in someway- the greatest success of Spinelli’s action all throughout his life.
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