Schuman Declaration

But If you go back to the kind of ruins of Europe after World War II and you look at the visionaries who first started to create the European Union, particularly the most important one, Jean Monnet, the way that they thought about this was much more experimental.

It was about trial and error and the Schuman Declaration, which is the kind of founding document of the european union literally says europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan it will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity so it's a incredibly, I think, daring way of talking about how you're going to build this thing just by doing stuff together.

And then the whole idea from the beginning is that you'd start doing things and they wouldn't work.

And there was this logic of functional integration where you basically start... building a de facto solidarity with different countries.

And at various points, people have wanted to have a United States of Europe and for Europe to become a kind of federation, a bit like the US of A, to have a constitution and to think about, you know, ways of... introducing quite a lot of rigidity into it and in fact in some of its key policy areas that's been exactly how they did it the euro is the classic example where you take a whole series of of macroeconomic um uh decisions and you literally constitutionalize them rather than seeing them as a space of of legitimate political competition but If you go back to the kind of ruins of Europe after World War II and you look at the visionaries who first started to create the European Union, particularly the most important one, Jean Monnet, the way that they thought about this was much more experimental.

It was about trial and error and the Schuman Declaration, which is the kind of founding document, of the European Union literally says Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan.

It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.

So it's a incredibly I think daring way of talking about how you're going to build this thing just by doing stuff together and then whole idea from the beginning is that you'd start doing things and they wouldn't work and that you know there was this logic of functional integration where you basically start building a de facto solidarity with different countries.

It was about, uh, trial and error.

And the Schuman Declaration, which is the, the kind of founding document of the European Union, literally says Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan.

It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.

So it's an incredibly, I think, daring way of talking about how you're gonna build this thing just by doing stuff together.