ABSTRACT
An abstract commitment to European inte-gration has long been an attribute of Ital-ian political leaders and, to a considerable degree, the Italian general public-certainly to a greater degree than in France or Britain, and probably to a greater degree than in Germany. The Italians have liked to portray themselves as responsible for the only successful historical efforts to unite most of Europe: the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church. In modern times, such Italian political leaders as Luigi Einaudi, Altiero Spinelli, Carlo Sforza, Alcide De Gasperi, and Romano Prodi have repeatedly articulated the vision of European integration. Writing back in 1918, for example, Einaudi, later to serve as finance minister and then president of post-World War II Italy, called for a United States of Europe, to be followed by a United States of the world: “Beside the United States of America, we ought to see, in close association, the United States of Europe, while waiting to see the birth at a later moment of human progress of the United States of the world.”1 In a fashion similar to that in the West German Basic Law, the 1948 Italian Constitution provided for the pooling of
sovereignty in the cause of “peace and justice among nations” (Article 11).2
