François Mitterrand et le «projet Spinelli»: un tournant fédéraliste?

This article explores the attitude of French diplomacy towards the European Parliament’s European Union project. In May 1984, François Mitterrand opened to a new treaty based on the «Spinelli project». The French President’s endorsement of the federalist initiative suggested a rethinking of the Gaullist paradigm, but did the support in principle coincide with an alignment of France with the federalist theses? Drawing from several French, Italian and EU archives, this article seeks to answer this question. To answer this question, the article draws on several French, Italian and EU archives. It is structured in three parts. In the first part, attention is focused on the reasons behind Mitterrand’s openness to the appeal of Altiero Spinelli; in the second part, we examine the reactions of the Ten to the Strasbourg speech; finally, we focus on the internal debate within French diplomacy in order to highlight its positioning on the federalist project and on the construction of a truly political Europe.