L’actualité de la pensée de Pierre Mendès France sur l’unité européenne

Abstract

Pierre Mendès France, one of the great figures of the French political left from the 1940s to the 1970s, is mostly perceived as an anti-European or at least as a great sceptical in matters of European Unity à la Jean Monnet. Nonetheless, it would be unfair to taint him with this unsubtle image. All his action was turned to restore an then develop France's economy and society after World War II. Misunderstood as advocate of the monetary austerity and the fight against inflation in 1945, he meant to implement a common planning by the Europeans, with the participation of Great Britain. He didn't seek to build a European federation, but a community to promote a new society and an economy in progress, delivered from the restored plundering of carpetbagger capitalism and nationalism. His European vison was larger than that of the Six, but he didn't achieve the aim. Accused to have derailed the EDC in August 1954, he invented a way to make Germany, of which he always remained suspicious, participate in the Western rearmament. The Treaties of Rome contrived him in a political deadlock: despite their very liberal orientation, he could not do other than admit them because they proved to be quite useful for economic development. In response to Charles de Gaulle, Pierre Mendès France knew how to develop in the 1970s a project uniting the European left, capable, he thought, to correct the abuses of the merchant's Europe by means of a common modern planning in innovative sectors, in full employment, in European research and universities, in social policy an in justice for all citizens. What should be retained of all this? I would choose his ambition to regulate European development by seeking the benefit of the people.