Books in the Memoires de l'Europe En Devenir series

Mansholt, a biography is the inside story of one of the founding fathers of the European Union. As a European Commissioner the Dutchman Sicco Mansholt (1908-1995) initiated the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). A federalist and a Eurocrat who forced through an allegedly bad policy that is still a millstone round the neck of European taxpayers, Mansholt was also every inch a politician who had the courage of his convictions. A charismatic leader and a model for EU-statesmanship. The book offers a critical appraisal of Mansholt¿s life and work as well as a concise history of 20 century Europe. According to Chancellor Adenauer Mansholt ¿ being a socialist and a farmer ¿ was too much of a good thing. President Kennedy welcomed him as a good European, while de Gaulle denounced him as an enemy of France. And as far as President Nixon was concerned Mansholt was «that jackass in the European Commission in Brussels».

This book recreates the first decade of the history of the EU: why and how the ECSC, EEC and the EURATOM treaties were proposed and negotiated, as well as the fiasco of the EDC. This history is set in the context of an analysis of the thinking of the EU's "Founding Fathers" (Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, de Gasperi & Spaak).