1. Jean Monnet has been called "The Father of Europe" by those who see his innovative and pioneering efforts in the 1950s as the key to establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor of today's European Union.
45 Facts About Jean Monnet
1. 2.
Jean Monnet was the first-ever individual to be designated as an Honorary Citizen of Europe in 1976.
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Jean Monnet was born in Cognac, a commune in the department of Charente in France, into a family of cognac merchants.
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Jean Monnet's mother, nee Marie Demelle, was deeply religious; his sister Marie-Louise was a founder of the French branch of Action Catholique, to which Monnet contributed financially.
5.
Jean Monnet firmly believed that the only path to an Allied victory lay in combining the war efforts of Britain and France, and he reflected on a concept that would coordinate war resources.
6.
In 1914, a friend of the family, Fernand Benon, arranged for young Jean Monnet to meet French Premier Rene Viviani in Bordeaux to talk about this issue; Jean Monnet managed to convince the French government to agree with him, in principle.
7.
However, during the first two years of the war, Jean Monnet did not have much success pressing for a better organization of the allied economic cooperation.
8.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Jean Monnet was an assistant to the French minister of commerce and industry, Etienne Clementel, who proposed a "new economic order" based on European cooperation.
9.
Jean Monnet left the League of Nations at the end of 1922.
10.
Jean Monnet returned to international politics and, as an international financier, proved to be instrumental to the economic recovery of several Central and Eastern Europe nations.
11.
Jean Monnet helped stabilise the Polish zloty in 1927 and the Romanian leu in 1928.
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Jean Monnet was considered among the most connected persons of his time.
13.
Jean Monnet would have preferred that de Gaulle work with others who were supporters, at that time, of continuing the resistance such as General Charles Nogues in North Africa.
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Also, Jean Monnet thought that an organization centred in London would appear to the French as a movement under British protection and inspired by British interests.
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Churchill invited Jean Monnet to continue his work securing supplies from North America with the British Purchasing Commission.
16.
Unlike De Gaulle, Jean Monnet was popular with the Americans and the English.
17.
Jean Monnet worked from an office of the British Mission at the Willard Hotel.
18.
On 5 June 1943, Jean Monnet became one of the first seven members of the French Committee of National Liberation, the French government-in-exile co-chaired by De Gaulle and Henri Giraud and stationed in Algiers, as Commissaire a l'Armement.
19.
The Jean Monnet Plan emphasized expansion, modernization, efficiency, and modern management practice.
20.
The Jean Monnet Plan created the impetus for French foreign minister Robert Schuman's proposal to pool the French and German markets for coal and steel.
21.
In 1952, Jean Monnet became the first president of the ECSC's High Authority.
22.
In 1955, Jean Monnet founded the Action Committee for the United States of Europe in order to revive European construction following the failure of the European Defence Community.
23.
Jean Monnet resigned and ended the Committee's activity on 9 May 1975, the 25th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.
24.
Since divorce was difficult or impossible to obtain in most European countries, Silvia and Jean Monnet met in Moscow, as it was possible there to obtain citizenship and residence qualifications rapidly and to divorce and remarry at once.
25.
Jean Monnet arranged for Silvia to obtain Soviet citizenship; she immediately divorced her husband and married Jean Monnet.
26.
The idea for the Moscow marriage came from Dr Ludwik Rajchman, whom Jean Monnet had met during his time at the League of Nations.
27.
The Jean Monnet family returned to France in 1945 and, after the death of Francisco Giannini in 1974, the couple married canonically in the cathedral of Lourdes.
28.
Silvia Jean Monnet was very important to her husband throughout their forty-five years of marriage, according to Louis Joxe, Jean Monnet "would spend hours writing to his wife, whose opinion mattered more to him than that of anyone else".
29.
On 16 March 1979, Jean Monnet died at the age of 90 in his home in Houjarray, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne.
30.
Jean Monnet's funeral took place in the church of Montfort-l'Amaury on 20 March 1979, with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt both present.
31.
In 1953 Jean Monnet was awarded the Karlspreis by the city of Aachen in recognition of his achievements.
32.
Jean Monnet received numerous other prizes and honorary degrees, including Doctor Honoris Causa from the universities of Cambridge, Dartmouth, Yale, and Oxford.
33.
Jean Monnet was an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
34.
Jean Monnet was the first to be bestowed Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European Council of the European Union, for extraordinary work to promote European cooperation on 2 April 1976, he remained the only one for a generation until Helmut Kohl received the same distinction in 1998.
35.
The Jean Monnet House is located in Houjarray, a hamlet of Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, Yvelines, 80 kilometres outside Paris.
36.
Jean Monnet liked fireside conversations with journalists such as Walter Lippmann, Hubert Beuve-Mery, or his neighbour Pierre Viansson-Ponte.
37.
Many educational institutions are named after Monnet, including numerous French Lycees and Jean Monnet University, situated on two campuses in Saint-Etienne.
38.
The Jean Monnet Building was the principal location of the European Commission's activities in Luxembourg between 1975 and 2016.
39.
The Jean Monnet Association, created in 1986 and initially chaired by Etienne Hirsch, is a French non-profit that organizes about 250 conferences on European history and current events each year.
40.
The Jean Monnet Council was formed in the United States in 1988, on the centenary of Monnet's birth.
41.
In 1997, it erected a plaque on the Willard Hotel in memory of the office Jean Monnet kept there during World War II.
42.
The Jean Monnet Institute is a French nonprofit, established in 2021 to leverage Monnet's legacy to foster European integration and chaired by Monnet's grandson Jean-Marc Lieberherr.
43.
Jean Monnet Actions are organised and applied for via higher education institutions.
44.
Jean Monnet Chairs are teaching posts with a specialisation in European Union studies for university professors or senior lecturers.
45.
Jean Monnet chairs have been established, for example, at the following universities :.