The schuman.info web site brings European political, economic, philosophical understanding from the independentSchuman Project   ©Bron  2000-01-01  YOUR COMMENTS

           The Schuman Project

The project is an independent research activity devoted to understanding the bases of Robert Schuman's thought and work. Since the 1970s a number of books and academic articles have been published as part of further biographical and background research. A technical research library (Problembibliothek) provides some means to analyze the project's collection of Schuman's writings and speeches. Tape recorded interviews with former colleagues also form part of the work material of the project.
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INTRODUCTION
Major changes were introduced in Europe’s postwar policy during Robert Schuman’s two premierships of France in 1947-8: re-establishment of a sound democracy against insurrectional movements, a balanced budget and a healthy economy, Marshall Aid and the beginning of NATO. His government proposed Europe’s first parliamentary assembly. The Council of Europe became the “beacon” and “laboratory” for a major scientific experiment in peace. In 1949 in a series of speeches in London, Strasbourg, Brussels and in North America, Robert Schuman called for the development of a new political entity, a supranational Community of Europe. He defined its democracy and its final frontiers. He set its long-term policy objectives and strategy including the democratic means of unifying Europe then divided by the Cold War. He predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union before the end of the twentieth century. He was clear that a supranational Community would achieve lasting peace in Europe. It has. It would be an example that the world can follow in other areas.

On 9 May 1950 the France became the world’s first government to agree to these democratic, supranational principles in the Schuman Declaration. The European Coal and Steel Community embracing five supranational institutions pioneered this new epoch for the world.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
Schuman described the supranational philosophy behind the Community as being like ‘a scientific discovery’. He said that he was undertaking an ‘experiment’ to confirm the scientific laws for eternal peace between nations and for the wellbeing of the world.

The aims of the Schuman Project are to conduct in-depth research for a biography of Schuman and to investigate his political philosophy, the theory and political practice behind the beginnings of our Europe and the predictions he made about its future. It involves a programme of research, based on more than thirty years of investigation and analysis, on the origin of the European Community and, across more than 2000 years of Europe’s history, the unprecedented peace and prosperity that it instigated. The aim is to make the results of this research available to governments, scholars and the general public via publications and the website, schuman.info

RESOURCES
The Schuman Project has its own large, private collection of Schuman material and archives. It has a critical library resource of some 17,000 specialized books and documents to research Schuman-related issues on history, economics, philosophy, theology and politics. The Schuman Project is completely independent.

Books
NEW BOOK: THE DEMOCRATIC VISION FOR EUROPE.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EU PRESIDENT
Europe is in a constitutional crisis after resounding No votes in the French and Dutch referendums. Is this popular distrust due to a democratic deficit? If so why did Europe's founding fathers and all parliaments of the Community agree to a less than democratic system? Or is the truth simply that the new supranational democracy has been subverted by self-seeking politicians over the years? Robert Schuman warned in 1963 that political counterfeiters were already undermining European democracy. You need to know what happened! Read the surprising answers in this Open Letter sent to all heads of government of members states and all presidents of the EU institutions. This guide on European democracy describes the five key institutions created by Schuman, the founding fathers and democratically agreed in the parliaments of the member states. It describes how institutions should have developed to fulfill these democratic pledges. David Heilbron Price describes how self-serving politicians and others altered the five institutions and how the European Court judged this political subversion that reduced democratic consultation. It shows how Schuman’s own scientific test can easily show up counterfeit democracy. It predicts that restoration of real democracy in those five institutions can provide coherence, peace and prosperity and an example to the planet such as never previously seen in history.
ISBN: 0952727668.
        6 euros.Book available from European Bookshop, 1 rue de l'Orme, Brussels 1040www.libeurop.be

NEW BOOK: ‘SCHUMAN OR MONNET? THE REAL ARCHITECT OF  EUROPE’
SCHUMAN’S CALL FOR EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY. WHAT IS STILL TO BE DONE.

The Councils of Ministers should be open to the public and the press. That is what Robert Schuman, the founder of the European Union, wrote about fifty years ago but little progress has been made since. Councils, he said, ‘must be under the control of public opinion.’ Sessions should not customarily be closed, but should conform to democratically agreed European rules for openness ‘at the service of the people and acting in agreement with them.’

Schuman’s definition of DEMOCRACY is quoted in a new book: SCHUMAN OR MONNET? THE REAL ARCHITECT OF EUROPE (ISBN: 09527276 41). The book contains:

Some are published for the first time in the French original with an English translation. Dating from the years before his famous Declaration of 9 May 1950 that launched the European Community, they reveal Schuman’s long-term strategy in creating a supranational organization of European democracies. The speeches prove that Schuman was the real architect of today’s European Union -- and that he considered the creation of the first European Community to be of global importance. The supranational system was a means to ‘save our Continent and preserve the world from suicide.

The success of the Community system is indisputable. After being the cockpit of wars for two thousand years, Europe is now enjoying the longest period of democratic peace and prosperity in its history. It is now having positive, stabilising effects on world politics. The supranational method was a ‘scientific discovery’. Schuman applied it in his ‘European experiment’ as Prime Minister in 1947-8, and Foreign Minister, despite fierce, nationalistic opposition.

How did Schuman reconcile deadly, ancestral enemies? Reconciling principles are vital today: the Union now embraces about half a billion diverse peoples. New democracies too must define, agree and apply the Constitutional Treaty. ‘Could one careless flaw in the Treaty rip the European edifice asunder? The failure of so many public referendums on different European issues should be a warning to us all,’ the book says. ‘The planet’s fate is linked to a smoothly working architecture for Europe.’ A return to selfish nationalism would be catastrophic. According to Schuman’s own definition of democracy, the present European Union still does not measure up. The book gives examples where European institutions are failing the European citizen. The method Schuman initiated can improve both European solidarity and broader cultural diversity.
                            Book available from European Bookshop, 1 rue de l'Orme, Brussels 1040www.libeurop.be
 

Schuman's Warning of the Nazi Destruction of the Jews by D Heilbron Price, 32pp Edition  2004.
ISBN: 095272765X
Robert Schuman was one of the first European politicians to warn of the systematic destruction of the Jews by the Nazis as German government policy. His story is extraordinary. Schuman had been the first French Deputy to be arrested by the Nazis for his resistance to oppression in his native Lorraine. While still a prisoner in Germany of the Gauleiter and with amazing sang-froid using a network of contacts in Germany and France, Schuman conducted his own intelligence work. He escaped and in August 1942 and reported to the authorities in France, the church and the Resistance the gruesome facts. The Jews had already been brutally and completely destroyed in the Ukraine and the Nazis were systematically destroying Jews elsewhere. This publication also describes some of Schuman's links with anti-Nazi German Resistance figures and their role in the development of the supranational European Community after the war.
             Book available from European Bookshop, 244 rue de la Loi, Brussels 1040www.libeurop.be

Russia and the danger for the European Union by D Heilbron Price, 280pp Edition  2000. ISBN: 0952727609
In a few short years following the collapse of Soviet power, Russia lost half its economic production, a far more traumatic experience than the USA in the years of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Wild capitalism, crime, corruption have pauperized the general population. The IMF now rates Russia among the world's most corrupt states. Lack of investment is a major problem. The Soviet and Russian collapse is of planetary importance. It is Europe's central problem.

Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB operative has created a new structure based on 'the dictatorship of law', unification of political forces in Parliament, and promised an increase in military pride and a more controlled press. Will his reforms lead to a more stable and democratic Europe? What can the European Union do to help not only human rights and democratisation of Russia but the other countries formerly in the Soviet orbit such as Belarus and the Ukraine? The economic life and death of the two halves of the European continent are in fact becoming more and more dependent. Will, however, Russia with its long-drawn out civil war in Chechnya veer towards autocratic fascism, neo-militarism, oligarchic gangsterism or state-control? Schuman's ideas on supranational institutions show how democracy and human rights can be safeguarded as in postwar western Europe.  Several scenarios are described to create a new supranational system across the European continent where peace and security can be assured. Energy is Russia’s main economic-foreign policy lever. The European Union has a duty to sustain Russia on a democratic path. At the same time the Community’s vital interests and freedoms are compromised by its gas and petroleum energy dependence on countries like those of the former Soviet Union. David Price traces the geo-political history of pipeline politics with these countries. He proposes a supranational Energy Community that will act as a strategic bridge of common interests across the Continent. Its institutions would act like the Coal and Steel Community did for Western Europe. This would accelerate the adhesion of central and eastern European Countries to the EU. Based on the democratizing, reconciling principles of Robert Schuman, the book defines a concrete project for real European security, foreign and energy policy. A number of chapters describe how, by extending the supranational system down to a cell financial structure at the microeconomic level, growth and anti-corruption can be encouraged.

New Cold War or Common European Home? The question of the millennium by D Heilbron Price,100pp ISBN:0952727617
The Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century, Robert Schuman, then president of the European Parliamentary Assembly, told some younger politicians. 'I may not see it,' he said, 'but if you leave a normal lifetime you will.' That prediction -- or 'certainty', as Schuman put it -- has become a startling and sudden  reality in our lifetime.

This event, comparable in historical moment to the fall of the Roman empire, provided the best chance to unify the whole continent in peace. In the twentieth century 60 million Europeans, both civilian and soldiers, died in wars. Further millions were locked up in gulags and concentration camps for their race, religion or politics. The great European revolution of 1989-91 offered historic opportunity to unite the continent in peace.  Yet instead the European Union began decades-long negotiations for 'enlargement'.
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This book describes Schuman's ideas on post-Soviet Europe, his attitude to the unification of the continent, his method and his warnings. 'It is our duty to be ready,' he told Europeans. Was the European Union ready? In 1950 only five years after the destructive vortex of WW2, Schuman laid new foundations. Will post-Soviet Europe have to wait ten, fifteen, twenty years or more? Will it be too late for some countries? Today democracy and human rights are under threat. Destructive and nationalistic forces have wreaked havoc on European peoples from  former Yugoslavia and Albania to Belarus and Russia.

The Schuman approach to unify the entire continent including Russia and  to detoxify the errors of the past has yet to be applied. This book describes what Schuman said that Europe should do. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe was offered an historic chance for the unity of the whole continent. A number of chapters describe the conditions and means necessary to create ‘the capital of trust’ for a Community system and the ‘supranational management of vital resources’. Unless Europe resolves its monopoly/monopsony energy dependence it could find taps turned off in a new cold world.
 

Robert Schuman and the Yugoslav crisis          36 pages  ISBN: 0952727633
In 1934 after an extensive investigation of Yugoslavia, Robert Schuman returned to France and wrote urgently to Foreign Minister Louis Barthou warning him of pending dangers. The warning was ignored. Both King Alexander and the French Foreign Minister were assassinated in Marseilles. European politics took a decisive turn for the worse towards world war two. The surprising article written by Schuman later and how his ideas were important in the development of the European Union are detailed in this gripping historic reconstruction.

 

Robert Schuman: jeteur de jalons de la paix mondiale     18pages
Une super-puissance est entree sur la scene mondiale, apparemment sans bouleverser les vieux etats-nations. C'est la plus grande puissance commerciale au monde. Et pourtant les vieux et les nouveaux etats de l'Europe persistent, plus robuste que jamais. Comment est-ce que ces changements majeurs ont ete effectues? Le droit supranational ne cree pas une super-etat federal. C'est le secret et l'oeuvre de Robert Schuman.
 
 

Reconciliation:  Schuman, Adenauer, Buchman and the salvation of Europe by D Heilbron Price, 200pp
'Wars have ravaged hearts and minds more ruinously than material devastation,' said Robert Schuman after the world war two had pulverized the old continent. How was hate and distrust replaced by reconciliation between peoples and nations? This study describes that process in the words and documents of Schuman and Adenauer and Frank Buchman. Buchman's work for European reconciliation was described by a German diplomat as being 'largely responsible' for this major turning point in European history.
 

Theory and Application in Near East and Post-Soviet Europe
Pacifusion: making peace permanent through the fusion of vital interests: paper given by D H Price, International Institute for Peace, Vienna 1991.

ENERGY
Contribution to European Commission’s Green Paper on Energy Security
 Europe's trillion dollar disaster? EU's energy non-policy

VERS UNE COMMUNAUTÉ EUROPÉENNE DE L’ENERGIE         2002
 
Ecology management and Climate Change
WANTED A GLOBAL GUIDE FOR HUMANITY       EV    2001
 

Academic articles

Historical
Schuman, Acheson and supranationality: paper given by D Heilbron Price at ninth Lothian Conference, London 1994.

Schuman and the dynamics of the new Europe: paper by D Heilbron Price for ECSA-USA conference 1995.
 

Political Science of Schuman
A European Super-State? Schuman's conception of Europe: paper by D Heilbron Price at UACES research conference, Birmingham, UK, 1995.

Schuman and the golden rule of politics: paper by D Heilbron Price for ECSA world conference, Brussels 1993.
Application of Lewis Richardson's mathematical method to supranational systems.

Newspaper articles
The Near East Une Communaute au Proche-Orient: by D H Price in Le Soir, Brussels    French version       English Version of text

Yugoslavia
Le message de Robert Schuman: by D H Price in Le Monde, Paris

Russia
Europe's greatest mistake: by D H Price in European Voice, Brussels
  Hilft Russland jetzt! by D Heilbron Price in Rheinischer Merkur, Bonn.
 
 
 
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