Donations

The Archives of the European Parliament are home to more than five million 'fonds' or holdings — about 5 kilometres of paper documents and over a terabyte of digital documents (the equivalent of 600 million pages). We are responsible for acquiring, treating, and preserving documents that record the history of the European Parliament and, by extension, bringing new life to its memory by making our heritage accessible to every citizen. With this aim, the Archives, consistently eager to enrich our fonds, always welcome donations from Members or political groups to process, disseminate and highlight their activities for the next generations to come.

Proposal of a Manifesto for a Federal Europe: sovereign, social and ecological

Event of the donation Event for the donation of the original version of the Proposal of a Manifesto. L-R: Ludovic Delépine, Head of Unit of the Archives of the European Parliament, MEP Domènec Ruiz Devesa, President of the Union of European Federalists, and President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola. Download more photos from here © European Parliament, 2023

The Proposal of a Manifesto for a Federal Europe: sovereign, social and ecological was drafted and published in 2022 by the Spinelli Group in the European Parliament and supported by more than 105 co-signatories, including Members of the European Parliament and National Parliaments, activists, historians, professors, and academics.

The Spinelli Group discussed the Proposal of a Manifesto on the island of Ventotene in 2022, almost 80 years after Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi wrote the Ventotene Manifesto, a document born in times of war and out of the necessity for a politically, economically and socially cooperative Europe. Following Spinelli's footsteps and inspired by his vision for a more unified Europe, the Spinelli Group keeps his legacy alive and advocates for a federal European Union, most recently in a report inspired by citizens ideas from the Conference on the Future of Europe.

The 2022 Proposal of a Manifesto was preceded by the 2018 ‘Manifesto for the Future of Europe: A Shared Destiny’, published prior to the 2019 European elections, which laid a path towards EU reform. Group members also appealed to the Conference on the Future of Europe for a Union that is 'a community of destiny and values and a model for the new world now taking shape' and called on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2024 and Council President Charles Michel in 2023 and 2024 to support reform of the EU treaties. Several Members of the 10th European Parliament have signed the Spinelli Group and Union of European Federalists pledge to advocate for treaty reform (see the signatories here).

On the occasion of the transfer of the Proposal of a Manifesto to the Archives of the European Parliament, this video recalls the history of Altiero Spinelli, the original 'Ventotene Manifesto', and the story of European Federalism including the modern Spinelli Group © European Parliament, 2023

On Wednesday 11 October 2023, the event of the donation and handover of the original document Proposal of a Manifesto to the Archives of the European Parliament took place in the EP Library Reading Room in Brussels. In the presence of the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, the Spinelli Group entrusted the Proposal of a Manifesto in its first English edition to the European Parliament Archives in Luxembourg. There, similar to the Ventotene Manifesto, it will be stored and preserved to inspire future generations. The Archives of the European Parliament are now home to this history of European federalism, hosting both its past and present.