Jean Monnet, founding father of what Europe?

Abstract

Usually many people think on the origins of the European integration as moment of sincere Europeanism when the wish to overcome the nation-state framework to build up a Federal Europe for its own sake was stronger than the national interest. According with this argument the disaster of the Second World War had been the main driving force behind this wish due to the need provoked and the remorse created. The research of the primary sources in the archives of the governments concerned, instead, signals that this spirit never existed between the Western Europe governments. The Schuman Declaration on May 9th, 1950, was a specific solution for a specific problem of the French coal and steel industry. The text invoked the building-up of a federal Europe as way to reassure the United States, the real supporters of a supranational Europe, and the F.R.G., an ancient enemy to recover but to control too but under the positive light of federalism. The European Defence Community project (1950-1954) was useful to clarify the real aims of the original initiative and to discard for the future the use of the words «federal» or «confederal» in any official document of the EEC first and the EU today.