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A union, not a unity: The Briand Memorandum

Em. Macron, Rediscovering the Path to Europe

Page 6

It is thus logical and natural that the economic sacrifices to be made to the commonwealth should find their justification only in the development of a political situation permitting confidence between peoples and the true pacification of minds. Even after the realisation of such a state of affairs guaranteed by the establishment of a close and permanent pacific union between the peoples of Europe, there would still be a need for the introduction, on the political plane, of a heightened sense of international requirements which would oblige members of the European commonwealth, for the common good, to elaborate in all sincerity and to pursue effectively a truly liberal tariff policy.

The principle that European political cooperation should be directed towards the following essential object: a federation based on the idea of union and not of unity - that is to say, a federation elastic enough to respect the independence and national sovereignty of each State while guaranteeing to all the benefits of collective solidarity in the settlement of the political questions affecting the destiny of the European commonwealth or that of one of its members. [...]

The principle that the economic organisation of Europe should be directed towards the following essential object: a rapprochement of the European economic systems effected under the political control of the governments acting in concert.

For this purpose, the governments might themselves settle, definitively, in a document confined to general principles which would constitute a simple pact of economic solidarity, the objective which they intend to define as the ideal of their economic policy (the establishment of a common market which shall raise to the maximum the standard of human well-being in all the territories of the European commonwealth). In the favourable atmosphere of such a general orientation could be begun the immediate practical construction of a rational organisation of production and of European exchanges, by means of the progressive liberation and the methodical simplification of the circulation of goods, capital and individuals, due account being taken of the requirements of each State as regards national defence [...]

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      Cf.  Proudhon, Principe Fédératif * Le mémorandum d'Alexis Leger * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * L'Union Européenne selon Altiero Spinelli * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union

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