In Europe

in Amersfoort, Germany and the Hague.
    ‘Jean Monnet was a unique individual. He was not a politician, nor was he a civil servant or a diplomat. He himself often said that all the positions he had occupied were ones that he had invented himself. But at the same time, even before the war, he had been one of France's most important strategic thinkers. And after the war, he was one of the most important in Europe. He reminded us again and again: once you start thinking that a peace treaty is something final, you're in trouble. Peace is a process that requires constant work. Otherwise everyone will do what comes naturally; the strong ones will exert force, the weak ones can only submit.
    ‘According to Monnet, the drama of European history, that endless series of ceasefires punctuated by wars, could only be circumvented by building something that transcended national borders.
    ‘In 1952 he became the first president of the ECSC, and I followed him there. That is how I became one of the first European officials. There were ten or twelve of us, and our offices were in the former headquarters of Luxembourg Railways. I was secretary to the High Authority of the community and had daily contact with almost all the members, as well as the top officials. In that position, I was also involved in the expansion of our little European regulatory organisation. That is how I met Winrich Behr. The first thing he said to me was: “I want you to know that I was a professional soldier throughout the war.” I said: “We're not here for the past, we're here for the future.” Later I heard that he was one of the last to be airlifted out of Stalingrad. At that time, in the detention camp at Gestel, we hoped that no German would make it out of Stalingrad alive. Now we were working together, and we remained friends all our lives.
    ‘It was hard work there in Luxembourg. Monnet was extremely inspirational, but hierarchy and official structures were not, let me put this mildly, his cup of tea. One time, after a hard-fought decision, I remember him coming into the office and saying: “The high authority has to meet again to reconsider things. Last night my driver said something we should think about. And he was right.”
    ‘In 1954, the French scuppered their own plan for a European Defence Community. That seemed like a major blow for the new European integration process. But Jean Monnet and men like the Belgian Paul Henri Spaak and the Dutch Johan Willem Beyen were soon making new plans. Those plans finally led to the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner of the European Union, in Rome on 25 March, 1957.
    ‘One year before that I had resigned my job at the High Authority. I began working with and for Monnet on his action committee for a United States of Europe. That committee consisted of representatives of all the major trade unions and political parties – with the exception of the communists and the Gaullists – from the six member states.
    ‘What did our committee achieve? It's hard to give a concrete answer. We definitely played a role in the turnaround by the German SPD party, which had originally opposed West Germany's integration with Western Europe. Both before and after de Gaulle's veto, the committee worked hard on the admission of the United Kingdom. And, of course, we also helped to map the route which turned the original customs union into the current EU. I still remember how Monnet came looking for me in summer 1957, out of the blue, because we had to get the monetary union rolling right then. The final decision to introduce the euro came forty years later. It was a long road indeed!
    ‘“The years of patience”, as Monnet called the 1970s in his memoirs, lasted in effect until 1985. It was then that Jacques Delors shifted the main emphasis towards actually achieving the “common market”. After all those years it had finally become clear that a common customs union – for the original EEC was little more than that – was completely insufficient for the creation of a real market. The treaties of Maastricht (1991) and Amsterdam (1997), which came later, fit within that process – and the expansion from six to fifteen member states made it all the more urgent. In the end, the Treaty of Nice (2000) was needed to prepare the organisation of the EU for the massive expansion with an additional ten member states, planned for 2004. After all, the procedures developed for the six