Jean Monnet
Jean Monnet
Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnetwas a French political economist and diplomat. An influential supporter of European unity, he is considered as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He was a European executive body, as President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, and thus he is known as the "Father of Europe". Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist. He...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth9 November 1888
CountryFrance
Europe has never existed. One must genuinely create Europe.
There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.
People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them.
Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest.
The fusion (of economic functions) would compel nations to fuse their sovereignty into that of a single European State.
Have I said clearly enough that the Community we created is not an end in itself? It is a process of change, continuing in that same process which in an earlier period produced our national forms of life. The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way of the organized world of tomorrow.
There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection (...). The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit.