“On the Incongruities of Monnet’s Europe”

Fransen, Frederic J. (1999) “On the Incongruities of Monnet’s Europe”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, PA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

First, I want to explore the way in which Monnet envisioned the role of time in the process of European integration. Second, I would like to look at the lessons which Monnet could reasonably draw from his work with international institutions. Finally, I would like to describe Monnet’s understanding of the world situation, and his views on the place that he hoped to create for Europe within it. In each case, I will present Monnet’s views in the time leading up to or surrounding the Schuman Plan, that is from roughly 1943-1954, and compare them with the points of view he expresses later, in the period following the Treaties of Rome. In so doing, I hope to demonstrate two things. First, that his own account of the process of European integration in 1950 was different from that which he later put forward. And second, that the Europe Monnet was hoping to achieve at the time of the Schuman Plan differed in several significant respects from that for which he lobbied a decade later. By presenting the issue in this way, I hope to shed some new light on the relation of at least one of Europe’s practitioners to the theoretical debates in which he is invoked.

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