Monnet6 The stranger and the 'Monnet Method' What World Leaders should know about peacekeeping

Shouldn't the world and all Europeans be grateful to the man who brought to our attention the essentials for the world to have peace? Shouldn't all European schoolchildren know his name? Some people might say: 'We know it was Jean Monnet who brought Europe a Community and peace. That is why we call it the Monnet Method.'

But what if Monnet himself said that he was not responsible for all this? What should Europeans do if it were found out that Monnet said that the secret of Europe did not come from his own brain but from a stranger who told him the secret? Wouldn't everybody want to know who the stranger was and from where he got the secret? The secret is vitally needed today. War still poses a major danger to the planet.

The truth is Monnet did in fact say that he, Monnet, learned the secret from a stranger. What should we all do about it?

All teachers, all writers of textbooks and history books should take note of this and revise their incorrect versions of history, politics and economics. What is more important: all politicians and all world leaders should immediately note that for several decades they have been deceived and that they had better revise their background papers. They should sharpen up their act before we are too far advanced in the next disasters.

The answer to world peace and European democracy does not lie in the 'Monnet Method'. That is just PR spin. To accept it means that they demonstrate that they are gullible victims of the clever writers of his Mémoires. But a fraud will not bring world peace or democracy. World leaders will have to change their ideas to those more fitting for a globalized world. They need to follow the authentic path and method that brought Europe its peace. That requires an honest search for truth and a dose of humility.

According to his Mémoires, Monnet had been involved in the peace process for Europe that created today's EU, only from April 1950. Returning from the French Alpine resort of Roselend (which he wrongly calls Roseland and says it is in Switzerland!), Monnet says he was looking for a concept to avoid a seemingly inevitable war. He does not say yet that he had created the great Monnet Method to do the job. He was worried. That's all. There are no papers in the Monnet archives that indicate Monnet or any of the Planning Agency staff were working on peacemaking. No paper before April 1950 even mentions the word supranational.

Monnet then makes a real revelation! He learned about supranationality as a concept from someone who he said was a complete stranger. This person just turned up at his office. Believe it or not! Extraordinary. Monnet reveals in the Mémoires that this person was at the heart of the key concepts both in terms of the definitions and the language. And, in fact, much more. Thus Monnet admitted in the Mémoires that he himself was not at the heart of the concept.

He says that this mysterious stranger was at the origin of the key concept of the supranational method -- creating a High Authority, that is a European Commission. The Gaullists hated such words like supranational (Europe's founding principle) and High Authority (de Gaulle wanted to be the High Authority, thus denying the true source of all authority). So weak-minded politicians changed them hoping to appease the Gaullist, nationalist and Communist reaction. As if changing words would make the lust for power evaporate! Some hope! That is not how you deal with self-appointed autocrats, whether so-called representatives of the people / proletariat or other rabble-rousers who were completely unelected and rejected (as de Gaulle then was).

Monnet said this figure who came unannounced to his office was at the heart of the word and also the reality, (à l’origine de la Haute Autorité, du mot comme de la chose. Mémoires, p 352). That is the stranger provided the technical terminology and vocabulary and also oversaw their creation and turning the words and legal expressions into a practical application.

Wouldn't you think that such a brilliant, wonderful person would be acclaimed across the entire 500 million citizens who owe their personal freedoms to the Community method? How many can even identify his name today? Why do so many, apparently intelligent people, praise Jean Monnet for the so-called 'Monnet Method' -- which Monnet says in reality he owes to someone else?

Why isn't it called the Method of the perfect-stranger-who-came-into-Monnet's-office?

Who was this person who for Monnet set down the key part of the Community system? He is a person that the "official history" -- the Monnet method version -- has basically written out of history. His name is not taught in text books. The text books say that Monnet was the originator of "the method". (Unfortunately they can't really define what the method is. How then could it stop two millennia of wars! How will it stop the next, major wars we are faced with?)

Yet Monnet says that Professor Paul Reuter was at the heart of the idea! The name of Paul Reuter should be as well known as Jean Monnet. Who was Professor Paul Reuter? He was none other than a trusted colleague of Schuman! If Monnet mentions, then rapidly passes over, Reuter's name and presence, should we not suspect that Monnet is trying to upstage and overshadow him? The real origin is being purposefully obscured and ignored. This distortion is equivalent to a news agency cropping photographs to leave out the essential fact, perhaps a knife in a would-be assassin's hand. An assailant is made out to be a victim, a pacifist. In this case we are dealing with the opposite. Someone who helped give us the longest period of peace in history. He is taken out of the picture.

Is Monnet's book guilty of ignorance or willful refusal to record the facts? Many other facts are expunged. The extraordinary achievements in constructing a European policy in the immediate postwar years of Robert Schuman as Prime Minister and then as Foreign Minister -- work that was acknowledged widely around the world -- is left out completely. What he had achieved -- such as the Council of Europe -- is denigrated as useless. Thus the Mémoires consistently sidelined the work and action of Robert Schuman.

It is practically impossible to bury the truth forever, so why did the book attempt to do so? Facts, even minor ones, are so inconvenient to fibs.

Monnet wrote: 'An accident brought into my office… a young law professor that I did not know.' The professor came from Lorraine, Schuman’s home region. Schuman was the most prominent personality from Lorraine, the province in the north-east of France. He had been twice Prime Minister. In 1950 he was Foreign Minister, and widely trusted around the world as an honest politician and moreover, a Statesman of great capacity and vision. So we have a story about the beginning of Europe with at least two Lorrainers at the centre of the construction.

For all Lorrainers Schuman was considered the primary legislator in the French Assembly after the First World War. Schuman had brought in the laws to unite the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to metropolitan France but without losing their local traditions, customs and advantages in law. The body of law was called the Lex Schuman.

Schuman continued as a great legal innovator after WW2. He was the major originator of the NATO Treaty, signed in April 1949. It was Schuman's government that suggested and promoted the Council of Europe. The Lorrainer in the Foreign Ministry had a burning desire to solve once and for all the problem of Germany. And now, behold a stranger arrives unannounced from the same formerly German-occupied province.

Would it not be obvious that something significant was afoot? Schuman was known by all by his Lorraine accent. Then another Lorrainer arrives chez Monnet. He talks about how to deal with Germany. Is that a coincidence?

He was, like Schuman, a lawyer, but not yet so eminent. Furthermore he was also an alumnus of the same high school of Metz. In Schuman's time it had been under German occupation; in Reuter's youth it was again part of France. There was also a Reuter in the family tree of Robert Schuman. They may well have been related.

Was this Lorraine university teacher known or unknown to Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister? Firstly let us say how well-known he was to Schuman before he took this post. When Schuman was made Prime Minister with a mandate to 'Save the Republic', the democratic future of France hung dangerously in the balance. Insurrectional strikes paralyzed the country. Reuter was one of the key men whom Schuman relied on to rescue France from a Communist take-over. France could have gone the way of Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest and the other capitals were Communists seized the Parliament. Then they seized total control of the State. Reuter was then head of staff to Schuman's trusted Minister of Defence, Pierre-Henri Teitgen. Together Teitgen and Reuter managed to free Parliament where the Communists had held the Chamber hostage. Some persuader!

Reuter was thus one of the great (unsung) heroes of French democracy after the war. Non-French people might ask: Why is so little said of this? Maybe the answer is that the Gaullists were also in cahoots with the Communists at the time. For decades later Gaullists had practically a monopoly of the media and the educational system. They rewrote history.

So we now have a Lorraine professor, former staff member of Schuman's close friend, apparently coming 'by accident' to Jean Monnet's office. Isn't the ego-centric plot of the Mémoires now getting a little thin?

But was Reuter sent by Schuman as Foreign Minister? Did the Minister know he was going to Jean Monnet's office? Maybe it was just a professorial visit from someone who was just looking up dusty archives. Was Professor Paul Reuter the prototype 'Jean Monnet professor'? Was he in other words totally unconcerned about the practical implications of a supranational democracy in Europe?? Was he the sort of person who would not criticise the Lisbon Treaty because the EU funded his chair?

Monnet says the opposite. He was the one who motivated and activated Monnet so forcefully that Monnet convinced himself maybe that he was the originator and the inspirer of the 'Monnet Method'!

What was a professor doing in Monnet's office? Here it is easy to be trapped by the Monnet spin. Calling him professor was not just a tiny bit disingenuous. It is a bit like calling Albert Einstein a violin player. Reuter did give a course at a university in the south of France. He also had work in Paris. The work in Paris was far more important than a course at Aix-en-Provence. Is that clear in the Mémoires? Hardly.

Reuter worked in the French Foreign Ministry for the Robert Schuman as one of the two top lawyers. He had to be meticulous. His advice was sought on every international agreement. He scrutinized all Allied treaties and matters with Germany and with the Soviet Union. Germany was Schuman's great concern and focus of attention at this time.

He also helped alert Schuman of the internal political plots against the Minister. There were many. As a trusted friend and lawyer he could warn him in advance of the conspiracies and sabotage (the word is not too strong) led by senior nationalistic officials of the ministry.

Did Monnet mention this? What do you think? It must have been obvious to anyone of intelligence as the main news of the day was about the political battles over Germany. The names of the politicians and the high Foreign Ministry officials were blazoned in the newspapers as attempting to destroy the policy of European reconciliation that Schuman was trying to create. Not many people in France at the time were in favour of reconciliation. But they did not want another war.

So the Monnet Mémoires tell us that the main ideas about the High Authority, the central feature of the new method of supranational democracy came to Monnet via a close friend of Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister. Is it really a logical deduction to say that Monnet invented the European Community method? Is it honest?

If you have a problem to solve with a neighbour and he sends a lawyer, you should expect he will require answers to all the most pertinent questions. Monnet was not a lawyer, nor was anyone else at the Planning Agency. In itself the arrival of a lawyer should have switched on lights.

If the neighbour is a friend you should expect that he has already thought quite a bit about the problem. If the neighbour is a lawyer, one of the most eminent in France, and he sends a lawyer to get your support for something, then one thing is fairly obvious. The neighbour has already deeply convinced of what he has to do and the lawyer he is sending is to get you to agree to a minor but important detail.

It would be extremely rash of you to assume that if you agreed on that minor detail and collaborated with the lawyer then it was you who invented the whole scheme of your neighbour. Reuter was a great helper in an even greater work of unifying Europe.

As we saw in the last commentary Reuter had a prominent part in the Schuman Plan conference. Europe's first intergovernmental conference forged its supranational democracy. This information came from documents held tightly until recently by the Jean Monnet Foundation. Yet the Mémoires say that Monnet 'hoped Reuter would come to help draft with us the treaty but matters turned out differently. I do not know why.' (p352).

Their own archives tell the Monnet team otherwise. The Schuman archives too. It contains the very full reports of Reuter on the progress of conference for Schuman's eyes. Furthermore Reuter had an official part of the conference, called by the French government, led by the Foreign Ministry, with representatives of other ministries. He was the deputy to the chief Jurisconsult of the Foreign Ministry, André Gros. These were the top lawyers who were authorized to plead on behalf of the French Republic at international courts of justice. The conference was not organised by Jean Monnet as his private enterprise, as the Mémoires would give readers to believe.

Why does Monnet insist on calling this high official at the Foreign Ministry, a close colleague of Schuman, a professor at the university of Aix? He says that without him, 'I (Monnet) would not have managed to put together immediately the form it assumed to make it the authentic document that originated the Community,' (349). Oh really? This is like saying that a violinist helped a schoolboy solve a problem of physics that the violinist had asked him about in the first place. The violinist departs and the boy says I solved it all by myself.

Professor Paul Reuter, a Jurist of the Ministry, was an excellent lawyer who accomplished this task. It would be refreshing today to see the so-called Jean Monnet professors, rolling up their sleeves, rising collectively from their chairs to the task of working for the implementation of supranational democracy in Europe. Paul Reuter would be a good example to follow of discretion, efficacy and humility.

Monnet5 Schuman's speech on 20 June 1950 that defined the struggle for Europe's democracy

On 20 June 1950, Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister, opened the Schuman Plan Conference, that gave birth to modern Europe, based on the European Communities. This supranational Community system made a complete break with history and Europe's record of wars and bloodshed. The Conference defined the five major democratic institutions of Europe:

European Commission (High Authority)
Consultative Committee (body for organised Civil Society, producers, workers and consumers)
European Parliament
Council of Ministers
Court of Justice

The supranational Community system also far surpassed the achievements of inter-governmentalism (still a major aspect of the Lisbon Treaty with its less than democratic accountability).

Schuman led a large delegation of more than a dozen, half of which came from his own staff, (Bernard Clappier, later Governor of the Bank of France), the two legal counsels of the Ministry (Andre Gros and Paul Reuter) one of the directors-general and other officials of the ministry. Other members included officials from other ministries, plus Jean Monnet (later President of the High Authority) and Etienne Hirsch (later Commission President of Euratom) from the Planning Agency.

The speech gives quite a different perspective than that in Monnet's Mémoires.

• Monnet was not in charge of the conference. Schuman makes it clear who was.
• The aim is to create supranational institutions, whereas Monnet says that he did not fancy this expression and never liked it.
  
• The conference was an intergovernmental conference with a single goal to achieve this supranational Community. It was not as Monnet seemed to think in the Mémoires a step towards a federation like the USA. Schuman later explained how a supranational Community has certain aspects of federal powers but is not in itself a federation.
• Monnet was wrong. Schuman was right: the Community system has not developed into something like the USA. It has followed its own separate path. Schuman said his aim was to avoid creating a Superstate, another Leviathan -- the most obvious example of which would be the federal USA.
• Thus Monnet Mémoires are wrong in saying that the conference was to do anything other than the revolutionary creation of a supranational European Community. It had no mandate to create anything else. A federation is inferior in potential as a democracy to a supranational system when fully developed.

The speech is notable for defining the objectives not only of Europe's first Community but setting the objectives for Europe's peace-making and peace-enhancing path into the future. It describes the goal as creating the supranational institutions necessary for European democracy. The delegates of the six States were told that their draft treaty would have to be so clearly democratic that it would not only have to convince the governments but also all the eleven parliamentary chambers of the six potential Member States (plus other democratic bodies such as economic and social committees). This it did with huge majorities.

On orders of President Charles de Gaulle after he seized power in France in 1958, the democratic development of these five institutions was "chloroformed". Governments have still not fulfilled their obligations under the early treaties, such as a Europe-wide election for the Parliament (instead of many national elections under different rules), elections for organised civil society in the Consultative Committees (rather than uncontrollable lobbyists), proper selection for membership of the European Commission based on the criteria for impartiality and openness of the treaties, and open debates in the Council of Ministers (rather than closed door inter-governmentalism). Selection of judges should also be made on more impartial grounds as the original treaties specify.

Schuman did not specify when Europeans would succeed in achieving full democratic status for these institutions but he asserted, on the basis of a long study of democracy, constitutions, political and moral philosophy that the achievement of democracy was inevitable. This prediction must be taken as seriously as the one he made in the Schuman Declaration and in the speech below that the Community system was able to make war between Member States 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'

Robert Schuman's speech in the Salon d'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry, 20 June 1950
Six weeks to the day have barely passed since, in this very room so full of historic memories, the French Government announced its plan. Six weeks, although a brief period when it comes to something so new and so vast such as the pooling of coal and steel production of our six countries, is but a short lapse when you consider the usual delays in international transactions.

Some have criticized France for being in a rush. There was talk of swift and brutal tactics. It is precisely because experience has taught us that the best initiatives are stifled when, even before their birth, they linger too long in the prior consultations.

In a world with so many failures, full of anxiety and helplessness, I believe we had the right, even the duty, to count on the strength of an idea to capitalize on the momentum of hope that it gave rise to and the instinctive encouragement of our peoples.

We are at the start of this work. Gentlemen, it is up to you, to whom our six governments have entrusted the task, to justify this hope. This is to be expressed in clear and flexible texts, in order to prepare specific commitments. They are to embrace the principles that determined the choice of our objectives and which constitute the basis for our deliberations. There is agreement between us to focus our work on the goal we want to achieve. Our governments have agreed to seek together, in a free exchange of views and from different situations, the best way to apply the principles we have assumed, leading to the creation of new institutions, unprecedented in the world today.

Gentlemen, it is an awe-inspiring task that our governments have allocated to us and entrusted us with. We will undertake it with respect, conscious of our responsibility. We feel that we are not allowed to fail this task, to abandon without concluding an agreement. That accord, moreover, as you know, will be subject to the judgement of the governments and the sovereign decision of our parliaments.

None of us should hide the exceptional difficulties of our enterprise.

Certainly, each of us can rely on ample statistics. We will also make use of unbiased studies that have been previously undertaken on a national level, as well as by international bodies. But never before has such a system that we advocate been tried out as a practical experiment. Never before have States delegated a fraction of their sovereignty jointly to an independent, supranational body. They have never even envisaged doing so.

We have to prepare a draft treaty, which define in broad terms the function of this common Authority, its attributions, and appeals against its decisions and how its responsibilities will operate. We have to foresee, however, without inserting it in the Treaty, the technical details that will involve agreements to be concluded later, after the ratification of the Treaty. These agreements must be easy to revise and adapt to the lessons of experience.

The fruit of our discussions will determine our conclusions. Here each of you will contribute your suggestions and your criticisms. What we will share is our determination to succeed, to work constructively on the basis of defined principles. We will be inspired by the bold sense of innovation that is too often absent from our international institutions.

Without losing sight of the specific necessities of our own countries, we must be aware that the national interest today consists precisely in finding beyond our national boundaries the means of achieving a more rational structure for the economy, a more economical and intensive production and a larger and more accessible market. Our negotiations will be better and more than selfish haggling that refuses both risk and trust.

Our initiative has no intention of ignoring or disregarding the attempts that are made elsewhere to clean up the European economy. My colleague, Mr. Stikker has recently made an important and fruitful contribution on a different plane than ours; there are between our two objectives no duplication or contradiction.

What characterizes the French proposal is that beyond its economic developments that at present we may only guess at, it has had and retains a political significance that, before any other consideration, has from the first hour appealed to public opinion in many countries.

We want to replace the former practice of dumping and discrimination with enlightened cooperation. That is essential. What is important, however, and is highlighted as the very purpose of the plan, is our willingness to bring together in a common and permanent work of peace two nations, which over centuries have fought each other in bloody conflict. What is important is thus to eliminate from our European Community this latent cause of the trouble, distrust and anxiety. What is vital is the hope of founding on the basis of this peaceful cooperation a solid European edifice accessible to all nations of good will.

We would very much wish that the United Kingdom were present at our discussions. We cannot conceive Europe without it. We know, and this reassures us in our efforts, that the British Government wants the success of our work. When both sides explained their views frankly and amicably, some differences appeared that have prevented it from participating actively, at this stage at least. We remain hopeful that the remaining doubts and scruples arising from doctrinal reasoning will eventually give way to a demonstration of more pragmatism.

The French Government will act in accordance with the concerns of all participating governments and keep the British government well informed of the development of our discussions. It will provide it with the opportunity, if not to come and join us, a hope we continue to have, at least to send us any positive criticism, while preparing the way for future cooperation.

As for us, we will begin work assigned to us as well. We shall first have to adopt a working method. It will be a team effort, rather than a conference with her meticulous and rigid regulations. We have primarily a concern for efficiency. Brilliant eloquence will not distract us.

An information session will allow us tomorrow to fix our ideas in this regard. They will be clarified in the course of personal contacts that we will have the need to establish and maintain.

The substantive issues will be addressed at the same time; we cannot separate one from the other.

We will share our ideas, we confront them against each other, and we will chose between them. The French Government will make known its own ideas in the next few days. The draft text that it will submit to you will form a basis for work that it hopes will prove useful and fruitful.

For today I confine myself to welcome you on behalf of my Government with the ardent desire that we will not disappoint the expectations of the people who put in you their hope and confidence.

Original French Version is available on www.schuman.info