Jean-Pierre Gouzy
Histoire de l’Europe, 1949-2009
Paris, Editions de Paris, 2009

Jean-Pierre Gouzy, vice-President of the Maison de l’Europe in Paris, where his «Journal parlé» – a monthly editorial – is very popular and appreciated, is, very likely, the last Frenchman alive who attended the founding Congress of the European Movement, which met at the Hague in May 1948, under the chairmanship of Winston Churchill. The former President of the European Journalists Association, he has also been a witness and an actor of innumerable meetings, events, demonstrations and actions to promote European unity. He is a dedicated federalist, and among those who understand that without a transfer of competences and real powers to a European government Europe will remain a beautiful dream without substance.

In fact, his Histoire de l’Europe (i.e. History of Europe) begins just at the end of the Second World War. The book begins with portraits of the first inspirers, pioneers and apostles; from the Dutchman Brugmans to the Italian Spinelli, not to forget the Frenchmen Alexandre Marc and Henri Frenay and the Swiss Denis de Rougemont. These men, whom Jean-Pierre Gouzy often met and worked with, had a common “denominator”, they had associated their fight against Nazism to a federal project whose aim and ambition was to guarantee a European future in reconciliation and union.

This book is, at the same time, an expression of a commitment without concessions for sixty years and a source of vivid, first-hand and valuable information about the battles fought by a small cohort of devoted and clear-sighted militants who were never, at any time, disheartened or discouraged by the advances which were always too slow and incomplete, and far below their expectations.

Thanks to the various inspirers or founding-fathers portraits, Jean-Pierre Gouzy presents an accurate history of Europe, the Europe of the federalists, of Churchill, Monnet, Schuman, Spaak and General de Gaulle, the Europe of the British, of Gorbatchev, of Delors – as many chapters are titled; it is the slow, plodding march towards the political Europe which is described for us. The title of the last chapter is “A low profile for a weak Europe”: the Treaty of Lisbon translates very well the lucid thoughts of a believer who keeps few illusions. A very sad reflection about globalization closes the book: “This globalized world is in the process… of breaking down into a myriad of entities, at a time when the only strategic, macro-economic, geopolitical balances are to be achieved in continental dimensions and cover the areas of different civilizations”.

A detailed chronology and an abundant bibliography are added to the volume, and make it a precious reference work.