Rome, March 3, 2025 – Legacoop, together with its affiliated cooperatives, as a member of the Italian Council of the European Movement—an organization of parties, unions, entities, organizations, and associations that promote European unity in a federal sense—has decided to join the public appeal launched by Michele Serra in the pages of the newspaper La Repubblica to take to the streets for Europe. Legacoop will join the march scheduled for March 15th in Rome, carrying EU flags.
The initiative will bring together business associations, trade unions, political figures, and institutional representatives who care about the future of the European project. The idea is to revitalize Europe, giving it new energy and reaffirming the values on which the Union is founded, in order to pass them on to future generations of European citizens.
"The appeal," Legacoop emphasizes, "resonates with our sentiments and the values of cooperators: the primacy of people, the democratic and participatory model, the value of the social dimension beyond profit, and the pursuit of collective and general interest. For Italian cooperation, the European Union is rooted in the ideals of Ventotene, where, in 1941, Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi, exiled by Fascism, wrote the 'Draft Manifesto for a Free and United Europe.'”
From these strong ideal and value-based foundations, the European Union was born—a grand institutional, political, social, and economic construction that ensures peace, freedom, and democracy for European countries, promotes citizens' well-being, and fosters social cohesion through collaboration and cooperation with non-EU countries.
"We cannot take the European project for granted," the association states, "nor can we continue to undermine the foundations of common institutions. Today, Legacoop and the Italian cooperative movement are ready to do their part to defend the European project, the democratic foundations and the rule of law on which it stands, and the model of social life and cohesion based on solidarity that guides it. We must safeguard the freedoms and rights of its community in the face of war, the resurgence of nationalism, and the dominance of economic, military, and technological power. As Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni reminded us: the path ahead is neither easy nor certain, but it must be taken—and it will be.”
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