President Kennedy once remarked that, in just 20 years, Jean Monnet did more to unite Europe than a thousand years of conquerors. Monnet's vision transformed a whole Continent and forged an entirely new form of political governance. And yet throughout his kaleidoscopic career, the man dubbed "the founding father of the European Union" never held elected office.
Monnet started out in his father's cognac business. Success at coordinating supplies during World War I led to his nomination, at 31, as Deputy Secretary-General of the newly formed League of Nations. But high hopes of politicians setting aside their differences to work toward common goals were soon dashed. Frequent use of national vetos wrecked any chance the League of Nations had of achieving its ambitious goals. It was a lesson Monnet would not forget.
World War II saw him advising U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the Victory Programwhich represented the entry of the U.S. into the war effort. But his biggest achievement came after 1945. Monnet feared that a return to business as usual would see Europe fall back into its old cycle of conflict and war. Growing tensions between France and Germany over the industrial Ruhr region suggested he may have been right. His solution was breathtaking in its audacity. He proposed to pool Franco-German coal and steel resourcesthe raw materials of warunder a supranational high authority. The idea was seized upon by French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
This was the seed from which the European Union sprang. The very awkwardness of his solution, carving out one sector from national control, provided the motor which kept the project moving forward. And so it was that an apparently modest plan for Franco-German conciliation gradually turned into a union of nations with a single market, single currency, common foreign policy and what will soon be 27 members.
The power of Monnet's gradualist vision means that it still serves as a blueprint for European integration today. The increasing interdependence of Europe's nations is opening up whole new policy areas for action at European level, which only a few years ago were the preserves of national governmentslike energy, immigration and security.
This integration, driven by changing realities rather than policies, this Europe of results, is exactly what Monnet had in mind when he said: "Europe will not be conjured up in a stroke, nor by an overall design. It will be attained by concrete achievements generating an active community of interest."
Jose Manuel Barroso, Portugal's former Prime Minister, has been President of the European Commission since November 2004