Jean Monnet

French economist and diplomat

• Born: November 9, 1888
• Birthplace: Cognac, France
• Died: March 16, 1979
• Place of death: Houjarray, France

Monnet has justly been called the “founder” of Europe, in recognition of his critical role in the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community, Euratom, and the Common Market. He worked primarily as an adviser rather than as the holder of powerful political positions; his ideas and plans have been instrumental in shaping Europe’s postwar moves toward economic and political integration.

Early Life

Jean Monnet (jeen maw-nay) was born into a family of wine growers in Cognac, a small town set amid the vineyards of the Angoulëme region of France. In contrast to other European leaders of his generation, his formal education was minimal. He left school at the age of sixteen, never to return. Instead, he spent the next decade traveling the world selling his family’s brandy. Long stays in the United States and Canada left him fluent in English and cosmopolitan in outlook as well as increasingly prosperous. During this period, he also began to form the network of friendships and contacts among leading figures in all areas of public life around the world that would serve him so well throughout his career.

Short, compact, highly animated, and energetic, Monnet was never a towering intellect who dazzled people with brilliant ideas. Nor was he an imposing physical presence or an impressive public speaker. He had instead solid common sense, enormous tact and discretion, and a remarkably clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish and how to go about realizing his goals most efficiently.

Life’s Work

During World War I, Monnet advised both his own government and that of Great Britain on economic matters. The experience convinced him of the importance of rational economic planning and of the necessity of countries cooperating with one another rather than trying to achieve their economic goals unilaterally. His success in coordinating economic aspects of the Anglo-French war effort, particularly shipping, led to his being given the post of Deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations after the war ended in 1918.

In 1923, problems in the family brandy business led Monnet to resign his position with the League of Nations and return to private life. After reorganizing the family concern, he began working in investment banking. His career as a businessman took him to Sweden, China, and the United States over the following decade and a half. Then, in 1938, the gathering clouds of World War II led Monnet back into public service. Working in the United States on behalf first of the French and then of the British government, he was instrumental in convincing American leaders of the importance of shifting American economic resources over to military production even before the war began. He is credited with coining the phrase “arsenal of democracy” to describe the role that the United States would have to play in defeating the challenge of fascism and with helping to prepare it to play that role successfully.

In the spring of 1940, with the deadly thrust of the Nazi war machine spreading despair throughout France, Monnet seized on a bold idea to prevent an ignominious French surrender to Adolf Hitler and keep the French people in the war even after their homeland had fallen. He suggested that France and England merge, that their people share a common citizenship, and that the war be carried on under the direction of a cabinet composed of French as well as English leaders. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, quickly agreed and formally extended an offer of joint citizenship to the French. This breathtakingly bold idea for submerging ancient national rivalries and loyalties in a new supranational entity was not to come to pass, however, as the French government opted for surrender instead.

Throughout the remainder of the war, Monnet used his diplomatic skills to smooth relations between the English and Americans on the one hand, and the French forces of resistance to Hitler on the other. This proved to be a difficult task, as the most important French leader was the proud and prickly General Charles de Gaulle, whose single-minded French nationalism was a striking contrast to Monnet’s broadly international outlook.

At war’s end, with France prostrate and impoverished, Monnet was able to convince its government that economic recovery would require careful planning and direction. He worked out a system of planning in which leaders of government, business, and labor unions would sit down together and decide where resources and investments could best be utilized. Monnet became the first director of France’s enormously successful postwar planning commission in 1947 and did much to launch France on the road to the prosperity of the second half of the twentieth century. Under his guidance, resources were used not only to relieve current suffering but also to rebuild, reshape, and modernize the entire French economy.

After World War II, all over Europe there was much sentiment in favor of some sort of European unification. Such unification, it was argued, could help strengthen Europe against the Russian menace, could promote the more rational and efficient development of Europe’s economic resources, and, most important, could help defuse the murderous national resentments and ambitions that had so often led to war in the past. A number of approaches to unification were proposed and even attempted in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, but none succeeded in overcoming the tremendous psychological, political, economic, and military obstacles that blocked the path.

Monnet, long an enthusiastic advocate of supranationalism, argued that the best way to overcome the hatreds and divisions of the past was to unite the peoples and nations of Europe around mutual striving toward a common goal. In this they could begin to see that they had common interests and could form the habit of working together to further them. A common goal required a common institution to coordinate and direct the peoples’ efforts. Monnet had few illusions about the possibility of eliminating greed or aggression from human nature. He was convinced, however, that the experience of living and working together under common institutions and common rules could slowly create habits of cooperation and of the peaceful settlement of disputes. His example was the civilized, peaceful lives shared by people within each sovereign country. His goal was to build common institutions for all Europe.

In the spring of 1950, Monnet presented his friend, the French foreign minister Robert Schuman, with a plan for beginning the economic integration of Europe. It called for the establishment of a supranational authority to coordinate, direct, and plan the coal and steel production of Europe. The member nations would have to agree to yield some of their sovereign authority over their most significant resources and industries. Monnet argued that in doing so, they not only would ease the staggering task of rebuilding Europe’s blasted economies but also would deprive themselves of the independent power to arm against and strike at their neighbors, since coal and steel are the indispensable sinews of modern warfare. Individual governments, he pointed out, would no longer have the ability to control these parts of their nations’ economies.

Here at last was a viable proposal for beginning the process of European integration. Monnet’s plan quickly led to a treaty between France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, forming the European Coal and Steel Community. This community, which went into effect in 1952, stripped away all the members’ quotas, tariff restrictions, artificial monopolies, discriminatory freight rates, and other nationalistic regulations regulations that had long strangled the heavy industry of the members in the name of protecting each from the competition of the others. Monnet, as the first president of the Community’s High Authority, directed it through its formative years. As he had predicted, economic integration was an enormous success. Trade between the six member countries rose dramatically, as did overall production and prosperity.

During the early 1950’s, Monnet also attempted to further European integration by advancing a plan for military unification in the form of an integrated army known as the European Defense Community. His hopes, however, were dashed in 1954 when the government of France rejected the project. In 1955, convinced that the Coal and Steel Community was functioning well, Monnet resigned from its High Authority. Its presidency was the last significant political office that he would ever hold, but its abandonment was far from the end of his career. Indeed, the influence that he had on events in Europe continued to be enormous. Throughout his career, he was most comfortable, and most effective, standing slightly in the background, acting as an adviser, allowing others to put his ideas into effect and take the credit for them, rather than doing it himself.

On leaving the Coal and Steel Community, he founded the Action Committee for the United States of Europe, which he would lead from 1955 until its dissolution twenty years later. The Action Committee was a group of experts, labor leaders, and political figures who shared Monnet’s dream of a united Europe and his conviction that the path to the achievement of this goal lay in the building of institutions that would accustom the Europeans to working together. It became a veritable cornucopia of ideas, suggestions, and plans designed to further the integration of Europe. The work of Monnet’s Action Committee, combined with his own tireless lobbying, was indispensable in laying the groundwork for the treaties forming Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) and the Common Market in 1957. These new organizations extended the Coal and Steel Community into the development of nuclear energy and into far more ambitious economic integration of the six, creating a real European Community .

By the end of the 1950’s, the integration of Europe was an irreversible reality but was far from complete. Monnet was highly disappointed by the refusal of the other European nations, particularly Great Britain, to join the six nations of the European Community. In addition, the economic integration represented by the Common Market fell far short of the political and cultural unification that was Monnet’s ultimate goal. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, Monnet continued to advance the cause of European unification through his Action Committee, through his writings and speeches, and above all through his quiet but effective work of advising and persuading. By the time of his death in 1979, Britain, Ireland, and Denmark had all joined the European Community, and the negotiations for the addition of Portugal, Spain, and Greece were virtually completed. Meanwhile such developments as a European Monetary System for the community and direct elections of delegates to its legislature appeared to justify Monnet’s optimism about the future of European unification.

Significance

Throughout his life, Monnet believed in the ability of human beings to address their problems successfully through rational planning and through the building of institutions that would in turn build habits of cooperating with one another in the pursuit of common goals rather than fighting against one another. Rarely holding any office that gave him power, Monnet worked by preference through advising and persuading others to make such plans and to build such institutions. The economic planning that he suggested helped to lead the Western democracies to victory in the two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century. After World War II, he went on to play a key role in reviving and reshaping the economy of France. His tact and his negotiating skills were instrumental in convincing French businessmen, labor leaders, and politicians to accept the idea of a planned economy.

Monnet’s most important role was his leadership in the movement toward European integration. He was able to translate what appeared to be hopelessly idealistic dreams of overcoming deeply embedded nationalistic prejudices into solid, workable plans. No less important, he inspired others with his vision and his enthusiasm. The Common Market and its success are, in a real sense, the offspring of Monnet.

Bibliography

Beloff, Max. “Jean Monnet’s Europe and After.” Encounter 48 (May, 1977): 29-35. In large part a response to the criticisms of Monnet presented by Douglas Johnson (see entry below), this article emphasizes the important and constructive role played by Monnet in European affairs throughout his life.

Fransen, Frederic J. The Supranatural Politics of Jean Monnet: Ideas and Origins of the European Community. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Examines Monnet’s ideas about European unity, the intentions behind them, and the work he undertook to achieve his vision from World War I to the 1960’s.

Johnson, Douglas. “A Certain Idea of Europe.” Times Literary Supplement, December 10, 1976, 1530-1531. Johnson, in this review article occasioned by the publication of Monnet’s autobiography, makes it plain that he does not share Monnet’s faith in the potential advantages of European integration. Johnson attacks him harshly for being unrealistic and egotistical, both in his writing and throughout his career.

Kotlowski, Dean J., ed. The European Union: From Jean Monnet to the Euro. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000. Collection of fourteen essays exploring the creation and development of the European Union from 1950 to the end of the twentieth century.

Mayne, Richard. “Gray Eminence.” American Scholar 53 (August, 1984): 533-540. A brief, sympathetic examination of Monnet’s importance behind the scenes in the movement to unify Europe. Mayne stresses Monnet’s remarkable ability to get what he wanted done while allowing others to take the credit.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Recovery of Europe, 1945-1973. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973. This book, by an English journalist who knew Monnet well and admired him intensely, contains an excellent scholarly account of Monnet’s role in Europe’s most significant economic and political events following World War II. Meticulous notes and a good bibliography and index enhance the value of this volume.

Monnet, Jean. Memoirs. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978. Monnet presents a readable and extremely detailed account of his public career, but there is little about his private life here. Indeed, Monnet shows himself to be too tactful and reserved even to make strong judgments about the figures with whom he wrestled in politics. The book is well indexed.

Pinder, John. European Community: The Building of a Union. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. A generally optimistic appraisal of the European Economic Community and its future. Covers various aspects of the union, including institutional, monetary, agricultural, and industrial.

“What Jean Monnet Wrought.” Foreign Affairs 55 (April, 1977): 630-635. This anonymous article reviewing Monnet’s Memoirs stresses his role in the founding of the European Community. It also raises serious questions about whether Monnet’s approach, centering on the building of supranational economic institutions while leaving national governments intact, will ever produce the true European unity of which Monnet dreamed.