Brussels, 11/07/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Movement in Brussels welcomes its former General Secretary Pier Virgilio Dastoli who, as we had announced, becomes the head of the European Commission's office in Rome. The International European Movement (EMI) "would not be what it is without him", MEP José Maria Gil-Robles said during a reception. Mr Gil-Robles is the third EMI president who has been able to count on collaboration from Dastoli (after Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Mario Soares). According to Mr Gil-Robles, it is important that someone like himself, in such a tricky and major phase of European integration, can assume this new task after having been among other things the assistant of Altiero Spinelli, then MEP, for years. MEP Jo Leinen said that he knew Altiero Spinelli personally but, when he saw Virgilio, he said, he thought that Spinelli was standing before him. Mr Leinen, as President of the Union of European Federalists, appreciates the "federalist spirit" that Dastoli has never forgotten. "He has not given up this 'Spinellian' battle for even one day" and has constantly recalled the federalist sources of the European Movement, Mr Leinen said. The European Movement - Belgium is also losing someone with Mr Dastoli's departure, its president said, Charles-Ferdinand Nothomb. Pier Virgilio Dastoli stressed that he has always, in his work, sought to deepen his knowledge, to listen to others (something fully recognised by the members of the Civil Society Forum of which he is spokesman) and then to organise them into action - which of course all requires true conviction. "The thing I regret the most in the draft European Constitution" on the table, he admitted, is that perhaps that "nowhere in this text is there a mention of the history of European integration", its fifty years of solidarity and its shared history.