Schuman's Europe

"With the EU in crisis and struggling to maintain its unity, there has never been a better time to look into the beginnings of the unification process. Schuman's Europe: His frame of reference explores the original vision of a unified Europe by Robert Schuman, the main architect of European unification. It examines how his thoughts, personality, religious background as a practicing catholic and his origins from the region of Alsace-Lorraine all came together in his vision of European unification. Schuman considered the European spiritual and cultural heritage to be the raison d'etre of European unification. He advocated integration in small steps - taking into account basic human psychology - and therefore believed that the process of unification would take several generations. National interests were to be safeguarded as much as possible, provided they did not go against common European interests"--P. [4] of cover.