Jean Monnet
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)
Jean Monnet, 1888 - 1979, was a man of his time. During his lifetime he saw European states almost continually at war, directly or indirectly, to expand their areas of control in Europe and their Empires, culminating in two devastating world wars. He, absolutely correctly, IMO, identified 'sovereignty' (as expressed through populist nationalism) and economic competition as a root cause of war. I think we forget how pervasive, damaging and inhumane these struggles for 'supremacy were as we don't experience them close to in our lives any more.
He (also quite rightly, IMO) identified a common purpose as being the means to overcome this state of perpetual competition and warfare.
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 …
That common purpose was clearly economic and his thinking influenced the initial setting up of the European Coal and Steel Community, giving France and Germany joint control of the industries vital to the production of weapons of war and to rebuilding the shattered infrastructure of their, and other European, countries. The EU grew from these beginnings and it worked. There may be national pride and some element of competition, and old enmities die hard, but the spirit of mutual co-operation and interdependence makes it unthinkable that nations within the union should ever contemplate going to war with their European neighbours.
The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit .
As Monnet was a man of his times we are people of a later and altogether more peaceful time. Europe has achieved the 'or' part of Monnet's proposal, a common economic unit' and, as far as I can see, member states do not have much appetite for the first proposition, even though some individuals may .
There will always be people who champion extremes, be it communism or the total anarchy of 'free markets' but pragmatism and centrism prevail if the mass of people support it. The EU is a body of individual states which have to reach consensus through its democratic institutions and that consensus is shaped by the people who vote for the national parties which represent them in the EU. They don't have to consent to blindly implement ideas which had far more relevance 80 years ago than they have today.