Post by Historical Archives of the European Union

🐊 Have you ever heard of the Crocodile Club? On 9 July 1980, Altiero Spinelli, together with eight other Members of the European Parliament, met at the Crocodile Restaurant – Au Crocodile – in Strasbourg. What began as an informal gathering would become a powerful cross-party, cross-national initiative for European integration and institutional reform. Faced with the limits and inertia of existing political structures, Spinelli decided to take another tack. Rather than creating another political group, he created a club: an informal forum where MEPs from different countries and political families could work towards a shared European goal while remaining within their own parliamentary groups. The club was a testament to Spinelli’s political ingenuity: by reshaping the context of cooperation, he created the conditions for consensus-building across traditional divisions. The idea quickly gained momentum—MEPs joined by the dozens, and the club’s work led to the Crocodile Resolution and the launch of Parliament’s efforts to reform the European Community. Even the name reflected his strategic thinking. Spinelli wanted a word “charged with the future and with no reference to the past”—one free from labels that could divide rather than unite. As we mark 40 years since Altiero Spinelli’s death, we are revisiting some of his ideas, strategies and ingenuity that helped shape today’s European Union. 🇪🇺 📖 Discover Spinelli’s own account of the origins of the Crocodile Club in the interview preserved at the Historical Archives of the European Union: HAEU, AS 39, pp. 621–623. The HAEU holdings also preserve a rich collection of documents that trace the life of the Crocodile Club—from correspondence and internal bulletins to the Club’s “Letters to the Members of the European Parliament”, now available in digital form. Search our database here: https://loom.ly/m6xU-js Fondazione Valenzi