. A Ferment of Change

JEAN MONNET

lean Monnet (7888-1979) was the HfatherofEurope." No single indi~vidual in{lueneed the shape o{ the European Union more than thisFreneh civil servant and diplomat. Monnet eonvineed Robert Sehu-man to propose the European Coal and Steel Community and be-eame the (irst president o{ its High Aulhority. Monnet eonvineed j~han Willem Beyen and Paul-Henri Spaak to propose fURATOM andIhe EEC, and then established the in(luential Aetion Commlttee (or aUnited States o( Europe to pressure governments to aeeept the pr~posals. Monnet worked hard, and evenlually sueeess(ully, to enlaf8ethe Community by adding Britain, Ireland, and Denmark. And shortlybe(ore his death, Monnet persuaded fC governments to turn theirregularsummits into the EuropeanCouncil.' &

Monnet was a pragmatie government o(ficial who quite naturallydeveloped a strategy (or uniting Europe that looked mueh like the step-by-step (unctiona/ism o( David Mitrany (see Chapter 13). Monnet ar-gued that problems o( i/1securityand human need in the world-and inEurope in particular-required radical ehanges in the way peoplethought. Nations, he believed, should adopt eommon rules governingtheir behavior and ereate eommon institutions to apply these rules.Such a strategy, even i( applied on a small seale, would ereate a "si/entrevolution in men's minds" that would ehange the way people 'houghtand aeted. For Monnet, the European Communities o( the early 19605demonstrated that small eollective steps sel 0(( Haehain reaetion, a (er-ment where one change induces another." This (erment, he asserted,would not lead lo another nineteenlh-eentury-style greal power-al-though a united Europe would be able lo shoulder an equal bure/en o(

Reprinted with permission from ]ournal of Common Market Studies.1(1)( 1962):203-211. Copyright 1962 by Blackwell Publishers.