Jean Monnet that elusive Quote

Eurealist :: Jean Monnet that elusive Quote: “Jean Monnet that elusive Quote
by Eurealist at 10:04AM (BST) on April 22, 2005 | Permanent Link | Cosmos

I have received an interesting exchange of e-mails about the following quote attributed to Jean Monnet,

‘Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.’

The reliability of this quote was questioned a few weeks ago on the Yes to the EU Constitution Blog

It seems now that Monnet did not say these words, so far it has been established that Adrian Hilton wrote the following in his book “The Principality and Power of Europe”

“One of the founding fathers of the EU, Jean Monnet, also a devout Roman Catholic, totally rejected the idea that Europe should consist of sovereign nations. He believed in the Catholic vision that Europe should become a federal superstate, into which all ancient nations would be fused. ‘Fused’ is the word he used in a comunication* dated 30th [sic - should be 3rd] April 1952, and is wholly consistent with the language of the Maastricht Treaty. For this to be achieved without the peoples of Europe realising what was happening, the plan was to be accomplished in successive steps. Each was to be disguised as having an economic purpose, but all, taken together, would inevitably and irreversibly lead to federation. After Europe’s coal and steel production were pooled, Europe’s atomic programmes were to be co-ordinated. Then would follow the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Market. After this would come the single currency, and so on. Monnet related on 6th May 1970, that he had explained this to Heath:

‘I told Heath how we had proceeded from the start, step by step, and how we had gradually created the Common Market and today’s Europe, and thaand how we had gradually created the Common Market and today’s Europe, and that I was convinced we should proceed in the same manner”

There may have been no evil intent; Heath and other leaders may have thought they knew best and that the people should simply follow them, uninformed or, if necessary, disinformed.”
3 April 1952 Monnet did say

“The fusion (of economic functions) would compel nations to fuse their sovereignty into that of a single European State.”

However the highlighted text above is very similar to the attributed Monnet quote, In reply to a request for clarification Adrian Hilton said; “I do not believe that Monnet ever articulated these precise words, but I certainly never said that he did. Looking at the similarities in phrasing and vocabulary, it appears that some over-enthusiast has redacted my words into a Monnet quotation, and this may have become the source of confusion. Yet even then they have paraphrased my words, which shows a peculiar propensity to literary creativity. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past month (and, no, I am no longer the Conservative candidate for Slough), it is that standing for Parliament causes people to twist, warp and misrepresent all manner of things that one has written, no matter how academic the thesis, or how credible and cogent the argument.

As has been observed, when I am quoting others, I not only place the words in the appropriate punctuation, but in the 2000 edition of ‘The Principality & Power of Europe’ I refer to primary and secondary sources. There is a lesson here (and one I learnt back in 1996 when I stood for the Referendum Party), that there is an imperative for all parliamentary candidates in an age of spin not to undermine the veracity of their campaigns with the use of mythical quotations (or, for that matter, inaccurate statistics…)”

Although it is always important to be able to justify our sources, if Monnet did not say “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”” then we should of course not attribute those words to him.

I believe Peter Thornycroft wrote in his booklet “Design for Europe (1947)”;

“No government dependent upon a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifice which any adequate plan must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked, in advance of having received any of the benefits which will accrue to them from the plan, to make changes of which they may not at first recognise the advantage to themselves as well as to the rest of the world” quoted by Bill Jamieson in Britain Beyond Europe.

This clearly shows that the thoughts around creating the United States of Europe over the heads of the people were being suggested at the time. The words attributed to Monnet do sit at ease with those of Thornycroft and other quotes of Monnet show that he was of the same mind when it came to declaring openly the final outcome of his dream of a United States of Europe.

At the National Press Club Washington, D.C. April 30th 1952 Monnet said:

Our times demand that we bring the European peoples together and not keep them apart. We are not uniting states, we are uniting human beings.

“That we bring the European peoples together” seems to clearly indicate that Monnet thought it was up to himself and his associates to bring about this unity.

One cannot wait for the resolution of all contingencies in advance, before bringing one’s own judgment to bear upon the action demanded by the needs of the present.

This seems to be advocating some form of action towards his USE that did not require a candid statement of the final outcome. This is confirmed in the following paragraph;

In the conduct of our individual lives, we do not wait for action to have the future completely revealed to us. There is nothing more sterile than to pose in a present context a question which will arise only in the future, where the very purpose of our action is to change that context. If we do not act until we know the answers to all possible questions, we shall never act, we shall never achieve the certainty for which we have been waiting, and we shall be swept along by events which we have forfeited the power to control.

Monnet does seem to be advocating if not deceit, at least misdirection and this was before the French put paid to the idea of the European Defence Community, the words attributed to him, do describe the strategy behind the Monnet Method, imprecise and steady redirection of power from the nation states to a European Level.

The point is even if Monnet did not say “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening”. That is exactly what has been happening, and that is exactly the Monnet method in action, Monnet did want a united Europe and was clear in his ideas that the people should not be allowed to stand in the way. The fact is that Monnet would have had no argument with the sentiments expressed in the quote.

Myrto Tsakatika University of Essex

Monnet’s aim was to unite Europe so that the devastation of war and economic destruction that it witnessed during the two world wars of the twentieth century would not be repeated. This was not a new idea; what was new was the way, or the ‘method’ which he envisaged for the uniting
of Europe. Europe, Monnet writes in his Memoirs:

‘…will not be built all at once, or as a single whole: it will be built by concrete achievements which first create de facto solidarity.’ (Monnet, 1978: 300).

The way to unite Europe would be to show the States their common interests and convince them to act on these interests, pursuing them on a permanent basis. Concerted action was to be a ‘concrete achievement’, insofar as there was continuity and institutionalisation of a variety of partial projects of co-operation on economic and social issues the common projects that would result from it. These projects would habituate European states and their citizens in co-operation. Gradually co-operation would be needed on other projects and whole sectors of common activity, due to the inter-dependence that would emerge from initial co-operation.

Given time, Europe would become united without realising it, as common projects would lead European states to pool their sovereignties.

The Monnet plan stood on two clearly distinguishable intellectual premises. The first premise was neo-functionalist incrementalism: In the fifties and sixties, neo-functionalism was highly influential in attempts to explain the impetus towards European Integration. Since then, although it has gone through modifications and reappraisals, it has been and continues to be one of the most influential approaches to European integration. At its core was the concept of ‘spillover’, the prediction that once initially triggered, European integration, at least at the economic level, would be self-sustaining. Initial co-operation on partial, but well-focused projects would get the internal dynamics of the community going, leading it to further, co-operation. Cooperation in one sector would gradually require co-operation in other sectors (Lindberg, 1963:

10-11). Economic inter-dependence would be the drive behind this movement towards integration, which would proceed quasi-automatically (‘functional spillover’), not political decision, i.e. an overarching public political agreement or a constitution. The consideration here was that the political sphere can be separated from the socio-economic sphere and that political union would come, if at all, at the end of a long process of economic engagement and intradependence.

Citizen allegiance and support was not initially necessary; rather it would follow from the ‘spill-over’ process, as loyalties would be ‘redirected’ from the national to the European level (Haas, 1958: 16).

The second intellectual premise of the Monnet plan was technocratic elitism: Jack Hayward claims that Monnet was: ‘…accustomed to the manipulation of politicians whose expectancy of high office in any government was likely to be short-lived and of bureaucrats more inclined to inertia than innovation…’ (Hayward, 1996:252).

Monnet’s general preference for governance by a technocratic elite, in other words, was due to his experience of the Fourth French Republic and to the operation of the French Planning Commission, which he headed after the war (Page, 1997: 5). Monnet experienced the instability and inefficiency of the governance of France, which was due to the radical and conflict-ridden parliamentary politics of the time, and he sought not to inflict the new European project with those shortcomings. Instead, he was in favour of governance by a small group of experts, because technocratic governance had been, in his view, the stable, long-term oriented and ‘responsible’ element throughout the Fourth French Republic (Duchêne, 1996: 51-53). It is

possible that his Fourth Republic experience led him to assume that selected technocrats are more likely to be responsible than political agents.

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