Eu Founding Fathers Quotes

Rosa was seventeen and she was Spanish. Amalfitano was fifty and Chilean. Rosa had had a passport since she was ten. On some of their trips, remembered Amalfitano, they had found themselves in strange situations, because Rosa went through customs by the gate for EU citizens and Amalfitano went by the gate for non-EU citizens. The first time, Rosa threw a tantrum and started to cry and refused to be separated from her father. Another time, since the lines were moving at different speeds, the EU citizens’ line quickly and the noncitizens’ line more slowly and laboriously, Rosa got lost and it took Amalfitano half an hour to find her. Sometimes the customs officers would see Rosa, so little, and ask whether she was traveling alone or whether someone was waiting for her outside. Rosa would answer that she was traveling with her father, who was South American, and she was supposed to wait for him right there. Once Rosa’s suitcase was searched because they suspected her father of smuggling drugs or arms under cover of his daughter’s innocence and nationality. But Amalfitano had never trafficked in drugs, or for that matter arms. •

The founding fathers of the European Union did not hesitate to speak about their aim, i.e. a European Federation. In 1950, in the establishment of the “Steel and Coal Community”, they suggested that economic interdependence associated with the establishment of a High Authority would lead to a European Federation. Robert Schuman (1886-1963), a Frenchman born in Luxemburg, deeply influenced by his background in the French-German border and a first-hand witness of the calamities of ethnic divisions effected by World War II, through his internationally renowned Schuman Plan (May 09, 1950) deservedly considered amongst the founding fathers of the EU, seemed to be precisely aware of where this endeavour would eventually lead to: “The pooling of coal and steel production will immediately assure the establishment of common bases for economic development as a first step for the European Federation… By pooling basic industrial production and setting-up a new High Authority whose decisions will be binding on France, Germany and other member countries, these proposals will bring to reality the first solid groundwork for a European Federation vital to the preservation of world peace” [Schuman, R. 1950, 1]. In the establishment of the ‘Coal and Steel Community’, Schuman appreciated that the High Authority would function “as a first (mean) for the European Federation” [1950, 1].