Brussels, 24/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Twenty-five years after his death, Altiero Spinelli, one of the fathers of Europe whose vision helped found the European integration project, was celebrated in Brussels, Rome, Milan and elsewhere on Monday 23 May. The celebrations were entitled “For a Free and United Europe”, the title of the Ventotene Manifesto of 1941. The Italian events added “For a European Italy” to this title. At the European Parliament headquarters in Brussels, the EP's institutional affairs committee, chaired by Carlo Casini (EPP, Italy), was addressed by the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, and a vice-president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding. In Milan, federalist activists assembled in Poerio Street where, in 1943, Altiero Spinelli set up the European Federalist Movement (MFE). In Rome, a celebratory event took place in the flag room of the European Parliament's Italian representation office, attended by politicians, MEPs, intellectuals, university professors and leading federalists, who discussed their relations with the great man to new generation federalists. The seminar was addressed by the vice-president of the European Parliament, Gianni Pittella, and by Francesco Rutelli, a former deputy head of the Italian cabinet and honorary president of Italy's National Altiero Spinelli Committee, who has just finished his term of office, that began in 2006 on the 100th anniversary of Spinelli's birth. The speech by the former president of the Italian Constitutional Court, Alessandro Flick, won much applause. PierVirgilio Dastoli, one of Spinelli's closest colleagues and currently secretary of the Spinelli Group at the European Parliament, illustrated the European sentiment of the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, while the president of the Chamber, Gianfranco Fini, gave a supportive speech. The Rome event was attended by representatives of the raft of Italian associations, cultural centres and even universities created by Altiero Spinelli, like MFE and the Istituto Affari Internazionali, and other bodies focusing their work on European federalism. The debate revealed a network of contacts and meeting of minds of activists stimulating European integration policies. Spinelli used to say that Italy's interests coincided with the growth of European democracy, recognising the rights of each and everyone - a vision still shared today. (Gp/transl.fl)