Founder Of The EU

Jean Omer Marie Gabriel Monnet (9 November 1888 – 16 March 1979) is regarded by many as a chief architect of European Unity . Never elected to public office, Monnet worked behind the scenes of American and European governments as a well-connected pragmatic internationalist.

" The nations of Europe should be brought together in a superstate without their people (inhabitants?) Knowing what's happening. This can only be done by step-by-step changes, all disguised to have an economic purpose, but in a long process which is irreversible will lead to a federation "/Jean Monnet, founder of EU, in a letter 1952   

During a meeting on 5 August 1943, Monnet declared to the Committee: "There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty... The countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the necessary prosperity and social development. The European states must constitute themselves into a federation..."   

As the head of France's General Planning Commission, Monnet was the real author of what has become known as the 1950 "Schuman Plan" to create the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), forerunner of the Common Market.   

The following quote is often misascribed to Jean Monnet — in fact it is a paraphrase of a characterization of Monnet's intentions by British Conservative   Adrian Hilton :   

"Europe's nations should be guided towards a super state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation."  

Monnet is reported to have expressed somewhat similar sentiments, but without the notion of intentional deception, saying "Via money Europe could become political in five years" and "... the current communities should be completed by a Finance Common Market which would lead us to European economic unity. Only then would ... the mutual commitments make it fairly easy to produce the political union which is the goal."   

Quotations:

"There is no real peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on a basis of national sovereignty. (...) They must have larger markets. Their prosperity is impossible, unless the States of Europe form themselves in a European Federation." — Jean Monnet (1943)

"There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union." — Jean Monnet

"Nothing is possible without men; nothing is lasting without institutions." — Jean Monnet

"People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognise necessity when a crisis is upon them." — Jean Monnet

"[Monnet was] someone with a pragmatic view of Europe's need to escape its historical parochialism." — Dean Acheson  

"Building Union among people not cooperation between states"

Monnet is sometimes credited with coining the phrase " Arsenal of Democracy " which was used by, and credited to, Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, American playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood is credited with originating the phrase which came to be shortened as the 'arsenal of democracy' and later used by Franklin Roosevelt in his speeches. Sherwood had been quoted on 12 May 1940 by the New York Times, "this country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies." Although Monnet allegedly used the phrase "arsenal of democracy" later in 1940, he was urged not to use it again so Franklin Roosevelt could make use of it in his speeches.