A frontiersman” “

In European unity “De Gasperi especially saw the chance for peace and the overcoming of the dissension that had caused the great wars of the past”. Daniela Preda , who holds the Jean Monnet Chair of European studies, teaches the history and policy of European integration and the history of international relations at the University of Genoa. She has recently published a book with the title “Alcide De Gasperi European Federalist”. She explains to SIR the process of European maturation of the Italian political leader, who in his youth had been a parliamentarian of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Vienna. What influence did De Gasperi’s life, his being a “frontiersman” and his Catholic faith have on his European convictions? “De Gasperi’s formation was fundamental in forging his supranational view. Catholicism transmitted to him a view of international relations based on universalism and solidarity, and averse to any form of exclusion and absolutism. The experience of a man who was born and brought up in a frontier region, within a national minority that formed part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, taught him to reject any form of nationalism, to extol the virtues of local autonomy, and to reflect on the relation between State and nation. An MP for the Trentino in the multinational Parliament in Vienna, De Gasperi learnt in that assembly the need to reconcile different interests and coordinate the various autonomies in a wider political and territorial system”. Your own research has defined, in particular, the federalist De Gasperi. What precisely does that mean? “It means that De Gasperi did not stop at ‘Europeanism’, but went beyond it. He did not limit himself to joining the bandwagon of ‘functionalism’ in an uncritical way, but committed himself in an ever more conscious and determined way, from 1948 on, to a federated Europe, incorporated with strong bonds in the Atlantic world. The new international order to which De Gasperi aspired, the one that would guarantee peace in the continent, had, he believed, to be rooted in the democratic method. Law had to be raised to the level of States and find institutional expression in precise juridical norms. States has to accept limitations to their own sovereignty. The turning point took place with the EDC, the European Defence Community, the attempt, that is, to create a European army, that represented for De Gasperi a means of building peace”. Are there occasions or speeches of particular importance in which De Gasperi’s federalism emerges? “We cannot forget, in this regard, the great federalist speeches in December 1951, when De Gasperi did not limit himself to speaking of a European army, but clearly defined the State framework in which it would necessarily have to be incorporated. From this time onwards the political unity of Europe became a priority objective of De Gasperi, who first obtained the insertion of art. 38 in the draft treaty of the EDC, and then proposed together with Schuman the convocation of an ad hoc Assembly, a kind of ‘pre-constituent’ Assembly that formulated the first draft of a Statute for a European political community between the end of 1952 and March 1953. De Gaspari then struggled to the very last days of his life to achieve the ratification of these two projects”. In the life of every European statesman a gap emerges between his ethical and political convictions and his action as a man of government. Was that also the case for De Gasperi? “I am convinced that De Gasperi’s action in the European field was at once rational and ideal. De Gasperi never lost sight of the needs dictated by State interests, but precisely because he was a complete statesman he knew how to look into the future, interpret change, and understand the profound breaking point represented by the Second World War in the history of the continent. He aspired to the creation of a new Europe, in the new context of the global system of States, and was convinced of the need to abandon the political ambitions of national power. In that historical moment, as Helmut Kohl eloquently said on the occasion of a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of the statesman from the Trentino, being realist meant being idealist. And this also enables us to understand why De Gasperi had such particular attention for the movements for European unity, within which he found appropriate responses to the historical changes then taking place”.