European Union Founding Fathers Quotes

The concept of Multiculturalism was actually first propounded by Count Richard Nikolaus Eijiro Coudenhove-Kalergi, an Austrian eugenics-philosopher, who was the principle founding father of the European Union and diplomat of mixed Japanese and Austrian parentage and

Both the European Union and the United States are in some sense the heirs of Rome. Like Rome, the United States is founded on a republican myth of liberation from a tyrannical oppressor. Just as the Rape of Lucretia led to the overthrow of the last Etruscan king, so the Boston Tea Party led to the overthrow of the British crown. The Founding Fathers of the United States sought quite literally to create a New Rome, with, for instance, a clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government—with the legislative branch called, as in Rome, the Senate. They even debated whether the executive branch would not be better represented, as in Rome, by two consuls rather than the president that they eventually settled for. The extended period of relative peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War has been dubbed the Pax Americana [‘American Peace’], after the Pax Romana which perdured from the accession of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in 180 CE. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union can be accounted for, in part, by the ghost of the nineteenth century Pax Britannica, when the British Empire was not merely a province of Rome but a Rome unto herself.

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].