His life was an unceasing testament to the belief that his generation, the one that had both unleashed and endured the fratricidal European wars of the twentieth century, was bound to overcome forever its divisions with the union of the democratic states of Europe. Europe counts him among its founding fathers.
To reprise the words of the Ventotene Manifesto, the document Spinelli drafted over seventy years ago with his companions during internment, we still need a union that “breaks decisively economic autarchies”; a union that starts anew from the founding values of the European project: peace, liberty, equality, and the promotion of well-being for all. BIS central bankers’ speeches  15