Italian delegates were only Altiero Spinelli and Ursula Hirschmann , alongside a bouquet of French intellectuals , including Albert Camus . The enthusiasm for the high level of the debate was short-lived ; no turning point , if anything , a setback also in Italy . Scrolling through the editorials of Camus himself in “ Combat ”, a newspaper born from the Resistance and edited by him , the distance between the interests of the Italian and French federalists is evident , these last concentrated on the fate of France in the postwar , on the reconstruction of bilateral agreements in view of peace treaties , not on the promotion of federalism . Camus realistically foresees the crystallization of the two blocks and the competition between the most powerful winners , the Soviet Union and the United States ( here we find an assonance with previous analysis by some Italian pro-Europeans ) and , if anything , cultivates in another utopia : a capable universalism to guarantee international democracy ( Camus , 2010 ).
It is worth remembering the meeting , crucial for the actual realization of the conference , between Albert Camus and Ursula , for what it reveals about her . Without having read the books , with these and other expressions he painted the character : “ A great player who would play themselves rather than abandon the game ” or “ A happy Sisyphus , who was able ... to transform their duty into passion ”. The immediate intellectual and instinctive understanding , which seems to matter more to her than the awareness that Camus would have disappeared from the horizon of the Ventotene project , will be highlighted in her story . In 1947 Camus dreamt of , yes , a Europe “ of people , free from the myths of sovereignty ”, but after the Paris Convention he had ignored Spinelli ’ s requests ; in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 he saw only “ about twenty snares ” that “ do not make it breathe ” ( Camus , 2012 ).
In the tortuous paths of the Federalist Movement , in the Eu-
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