AICCRE

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Italian section of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (AICCRE), Italian local and regional authorities, which met on 25 and 26 June 2012 on Ventotene Island, called for the revival of the process of European integration as a means of exiting the crisis.

"A new step in the European construction needs to be taken, this step being based on federalism and a Europe of self-governing and capable local and regional authorities,” declared Gianfranco Martini, co-founder of the AICCRE, alongside Umberto Serafini.

In this context, the AICCRE paid tribute to the European federalist forefathers of today’s European Union, including Altiero Spinelli, a former member of the European Commission and European Parliament.  Indeed, in 1941 he was detained on the same island where he drafted the Ventotene Manifesto calling for a federal Europe.

Throughout this year of celebration, the member municipalities and regions of the AICCRE will get together on numerous occasions in order to feed into a final European seminar to be held on 15 October 2012 in Venice, in the presence of the CEMR Executive Bureau.