Jean Monnet

Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) was a French civil servant, entrepreneur, diplomat, financier, and administrator. An advocate of European unity, he is considered one of the founding fathers of the European Union.

Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.

Quotes

• France is the nation of the rights of man. … I am sure that none of you commits the insult of thinking that the government, the army, or the administration could wish for and organize torture.
  • Speech on the war in French Algeria before French National Assembly (1957), cited in Torture: The Role of Ideology in the French–Algerian War (1989) by Rita Maran, p. 44

Jean Monnet 1888-1979

Quotes in the biographical profile at The History of the European Union by the Jean Monnet Association

• There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection…. The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit.
  • Speech to the French National Liberation Committee (5 August 1943)

• Through the consolidation of basic production and the institution of a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and the other countries that join, this proposal represents the first concrete step towards a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace.
  • Speech by Robert Schuman (9 May 1950), written by Monnet

• Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.

• Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest.

Quotes about Monnet

• [A]fter eighty-nine years of his life, Monnet remains, as he has been throughout, impregnably optimistic but not Utopian. He does not believe in miracles, and although he believes that crucial moments of opportunity must never be lost, he gives more importance to patience and direction than to speed and the construction of false timetables. His modesty and manner is underpinned by an unshakeable intellectual self-confidence. ... He is undoubtedly a great man, who has lived a remarkable life.
  • Roy Jenkins, Foreword (August 1977) to Monnett's Memoirs (1978), pp. 12–13