Spinelli was the rapporteur for the resolution on the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union that was adopted by a large majority in the Parliament in 1984. British socialist Richard Corbett thinks we should remember him as: "A man who always offered a clear vision on the potential of Europe. He was capable of creating a coalition with a wide level of support".

 

Spinelli´s intention was to propose a new Treaty, rather then to modify the Rome Treaty. He introduced the term European Union and proposed several new European competencies. Although some proved too radical for national governments, Spinelli´s idea of an internal market and more foreign policy cooperation were included in the Single European Act signed in 1986, which Spinelli lived to witness.

 

The dream of a European Constitution was a thread running through his life. Francis Wurtz, Chairman of the Confederal Group of the European United Left - Nordic Green Left, remembers him as "A man who was obsessed with his war-experience and who saw a European Constitution as a way to guarantee peace forever". As a political prisoner of Mussolini, Spinelli drafted a vision of a united Europe in the Manifest of Ventotene in 1941.