When it comes to broach the subject of Europe’s founding fathers, it is always Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi or Konrad Adenauer who pop into our mind. Yet, a former officer of the army and war journalist, known for his legendary hate of sports and love for drinks is always missing at the call. Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and 1951 to 1955, was indeed not only the mainspring of the coalition against Hitler, but also a major activist of the European cause. He was one of the first to call for the creation of the “United States of Europe”. The experience of the Second World War had convinced him that only a unified Europe could insure peace and repress the nationalist and belligerent passions of the continent once and for all.

We must recall that Churchill was one of the first to laud the pan-European movement, which began prior to the war with the publication of Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi’s manifesto Paneuropa in 1923. After the war, Churchill formulated the conclusions he had learned from history in his famous speech at the University of Zurich on 19 September 1946. He declared that Europe could not allow reviving the hatred and the resentment left by the wounds of the past. The first stage “to reconstitute the European family” of justice, indulgence and freedom was to re-create Europe in a regional structure, “a kind of United States of Europe” based on a partnership between France and Germany.

“There is a remedy which, if it was generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of the peoples in numerous countries could, as if by magic to return Europe so free and happy as Switzerland nowadays. (…) We have to build the United States of Europe. (…) The first stage consists in setting up a Council of Europe. And of this urgent work, France and Germany together have to take the lead (…) I thus tell you: ‘Stand up, Europe!’.”

At London’s Albert Hall in May 1947, just a few months after his Zurich speech, Churchill spoke as Chairman and Founder of the United Europe Movement. This association still resides in Brussels and unites private individuals and organisations avid to work on the construction of a more unified Europe. After the war it was soon at the forefront to mobilize citizens for a political Europe, instead of a pure economic community, advocating for the setting up of a European constituent assembly. It campaigned for universal suffrage to elect the European Parliament, for a common unique currency and for a European constitution. Its counterpart among the European youth are the Young Europeans Federalists.

In May 1948, hardly three months after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d’état, under Churchill’s presidency of honour, the Hague Congress was the first big gathering of the European federalists. Churchill called for a reduction in tariffs, the free movement of people, ideas and property, for a common defence, for the creation of a European assembly elected by universal suffrage and for the writing of a Charter of the fundamental rights.

“The Movement for European Unity must be a positive force, deriving its strength from our sense of common spiritual values. It is a dynamic expression of democratic faith based upon moral conceptions and inspired by a sense of mission. In the center of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law. It is impossible to separate economics and defense from the general political structure. Mutual aid in the economic field and joint military defense must inevitably be accompanied step by step with a parallel policy of closer political unity. It is said with truth that this involves some sacrifice or merger of national sovereignty.”

So Churchill, a founding father of Europe? We would be tempted to say no because of his British nationality. Indeed, British euroscepticism is now more than ever put into light with Cameron’s in-out referendum of 2017 that will decide on a brexit or a standstill in terms of English European cooperation. This euroscepticism is also carved in our minds by the “I want my money back” calls of Margaret Thatcher. Moreover, Britain rejected the European Coal and Steel Community, European Defence Community and the European Economic Community. In 1959, they even created a parallel competitor, the European Free Trade Association which brought together the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But we must recall that after the war, the United Kingdom was receptive to the European ideas andsubscribed to the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in 1948, to the Council of Europe and NATO in 1949 on Churchill’s initiative. Far from the widespread image of the English gentleman who sees Britain’s place as separate from the continent, Churchill helped lay the foundations for our current union. He was a man of foresight with an acute sense of history, often ahead of prevailing opinion, never shying away from saying what some might chose to ignore at the time.

“A high and a solemn responsibility rests upon us in this Congress of a Europe striving to be reborn. If we allow ourselves to be rent and disordered by pettiness and small disputes, if we fail in clarity of view or courage in action, a priceless occasion may be cast away for ever. But if we all pull together and pool the luck and the comradeship and firmly grasp the larger hopes of humanity, then it may be that we shall move into a happier sunlit age, when all the little children who are now growing up in this tormented world may find themselves not the victors nor the vanquished in the fleeting triumphs of one country over another in the bloody turmoil of destructive war, but the heirs of all the treasures of the past and the masters of all the science, the abundance and the glories of the future.”

Churchill epitomizes the will to turn one’s back on the horrors of the past. His desolation “to have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat” during World War II soon changed into the exaltation of giving European citizens the hope to look towards their future.