Jean Monnet

[bell ringing] Welcome to Churchill, the Finest Half Hour.

I'm Dr. Warren Doctor, and joining me as ever is Professor Richard Toy, the Jean Monnet to my Rene Cleven.

Well, it's an honor, Warren.

How are you?

And before coming to the University of Alberta in 2008, she was a lecturer at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

More recently, during her time at the U of A, she's held a Jean Monnet Chair and was the founding director of the European Union Center for Excellence from 2013 to 2016.

And Laurie, I think that already gives people a hint about what you might be speaking about today.

Now, moving on to André.

It's both ideological, as you said, and cultural.

And if you look at the history of the concept of European federation or just pan-European institutions, it started with Jean Monnet and the common market of France, Germany, Italy, the three big countries, and the Benelux, smaller countries, sick countries.

And it grew from a common market into the European economic community and then the European Union and the proclaimed goal of, and I quote, an ever closer union.

Now, Britain, for example, never voted for that.

It's these desperate days where they're trying to find ways to keep France in the war.

And there is a proposal by... a French official called Jean Monnet, who goes on to play an important role in the European economic community later on.

And he brings this proposal, which is so bold.

It says that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British union.

So we have, of course, different opinions.

But, you know, Jean Monnet, the father of Europe in many ways, a French politician more than 70 years ago, said Europe will be forged in crisis and will be the sum of the solutions adapted for those crises.

That is an optimistic outlook, and I hope it's going to be true.

And I hope that actually we find politicians that actually can voice it and communicate this, that we are in this situation.

He is a professor of EU law and a fellow, a democracy fellow at Harvard, founder of the Good Lobby.

Anyway, he's Jean Monnet professor of EU law.

He wrote an article on The Guardian, how the far right is tightening its grip over the EU from the inside.

And he says that we face the reality that the EU is really coercive at the border.