first time in history , governments were relinquishing part of their sovereignty to merge some of their key policy areas , in hopes of preserving peace . The latter was an act of thinking among comrades — all of them in principle with their ability to act curtailed — pointing at a federal Europe as the only way for a better world , a world in peace . Yet both events have something important in common : they both stemmed from the strength of individual will against all odds . The Treaty of Paris was a multilateral answer to an acute deterioration of security , true ; but it was Jean Monnet ’ s own restlessness at the prospect of a new war which prompted many successive days of drafting , without exactly knowing how and by whom it would be received , what would be known as the Schuman declaration , prefiguring the Treaty . The Manifesto of Ventotene was the work of Altiero Spinelli , Ernesto Rossi , and other farsighted individuals : they were persuaded that if nation-states were to be reconstituted after the war according to pre-war premises , with national sovereignty intact , it would inevitably lead to war again . If it is fair to acknowledge the men of the practical steps towards European unity in the fifties — Spaak , Adenauer , de Gasperi , Schuman , all of the often-touted “ founding fathers ”— it is equally fair to acknowledge the individuals who , out of nothing , when everything seemed lost to war , laid out a clear vision and fought for it . Today it is worth recalling that , in the face of adversity , their answer was the opposite of despair .
Beyond its powerful political message , the story of the Ventotene Manifesto strikes us for its epic overtones , and it is one that defies certain received ideas about the origins of European unity .
First , the theatre of the saga of European unity is not solely confined to Western Europe . The group of Ventotene included some Albanians , in the same way that , before the Cold War ’ s Iron Curtain fell , pro-European activists were to be found in all four corners of our continent .
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