Jean Monnet, the inspirer of the Founding Fathers of Europe

Audio 48:30

Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman.

© European Union 2021 - Source EP

By: Daniel Desesquelle

51 mins

For a united Europe to emerge in the wake of the disaster of World War II, exceptional politicians were needed.

While the European cities were still under the bombs, they imagined the contours of a Europe at peace.

Their names have now somewhat vanished from our memory ... Alcide de Gasperi is Italian;

Paul-Henri Spaak, Belgian;

Konrad Adenauer, German and Robert Schuman, French.

They are called “The Founding Fathers of Europe”.

Publicity

They are the artisans of a continent reconciled first between the French and the Germans via a pooling of coal and steel, in other words raw materials which are made into tanks and cannons.

Six countries, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and France, 70 years ago, very exactly founded the ECSC, the European Coal and Steel Community. . first stage of a larger project called the European Union ... 

But nothing would have been possible without Frenchman Jean Monnet.

He was never a minister, he was never even elected, but he was an indefatigable inspiration for the first steps in European construction. 

For more information: 

The website of the Maison de Jean Monnet in Bazoches sur Guyonne: here

With: 

- Philippe Perchoc, analyst in the research service of

the European Parliament 

- Corinna Franz, director of the

Konrad Adenauer House

Foundation

... Online from Bad Honnef-Rhöndorf

- Victoria Martin de la Torre, 

author of

“Europe, a leap into the unknown, the founders of the European Union from 1948 to 1957” 

at L'Harmattan.

Online from Brussels.  

© Éditions L'Harmattan

With

Sasha Mitchell

of

Courrier International

.

© International Courier

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