The Crocodile Club was an informal group of

members of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Comm ...

(MEP) that favoured greater

European integration European integration is the process of political, legal, social, regional and economic integration of states wholly or partially in Europe, or nearby. European integration has primarily but not exclusively come about through the European Union ...

, to the extent of a

European federation A federal Europe, also referred to as the United States of Europe (USE) or a European federation, is a hypothetical scenario of European integration leading to the formation of a sovereign state, sovereign superstate (similar to the United Sta ...

, and greater powers to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

. The group was founded on 9 July 1980, a year after the Parliament's first direct elections, by nine cross-party MEPs including

Altiero Spinelli Altiero Spinelli (31 August 1907 – 23 May 1986) was an Italian politician, political theorist and European federalist, referred to as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. A communist and militant anti-fascist in his youth, Spi ...

. The meeting was held at the " Au Crocodile" restaurant (10 rue de l'Outre, Strasbourg) giving the club its name. The club was formally constituted in September of that year, and in those two months the membership of the club had grown to sixty. Within a year it grew to one hundred and eighty, almost half the members of the Parliament.The myth of Europa - The Ventotene manifesto
europaallalavagna.it It was on the initiative of the club that Parliament established a new committee to deal with institutional reform of the then

European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...

. This committee, led by Spinelli, prepared a "Draft Treaty Establishing a European Union", a proposal to transform the then European Community into a partially federal European Union. The draft treaty was approved by the Parliament on 14 February 1984, by 237 votes against 31. While that text was not adopted by the

member states A member state is a state that is a member of an international organization or of a federation or confederation. Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) include some members that are not sovereign states ...

, it triggered the negotiations and provided the impetus for the

Single European Act The Single European Act (SEA) was the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Act set the European Community an objective of establishing a single market by 31 December 1992, and a forerunner of the European Union's Common Fore ...

and the

Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Communities, ...

(which established the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

).From Ventotene to the European Constitution
, edited by Agustín José Menéndez Following the death of Spinelli in 1986, a group of MEPs established the "Altiero Spinelli action Committee for European Union", a

federalist The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters call themselves ''Federalists''. History Europe federation In Europe, proponents of deep ...

intergroup intended to take on the work started in 1980 by the Crocodile Club.

References

External links

The Crocodile Club Resolution
speech to the Parliament by Spinelli

Restaurant website
{{Europarl Politics of the European Union History of the European Union

See also

References

External links