To approach history through the lens of personalities, as this essay does, carries with it serious implications of historical interpretation. This is particularly true when we look at the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of what became the European Union. We cannot resolve these issues here, but we will explore the implications so that the reader is aware of the choices that this particular perspective may involve.

One of the most persistent debates in political science literature concerns the dichotomy between structure and agency: the difference between the circumstances shaping history and the agencies or actors enacting change, or not as the case may be. To talk of the ‘founding fathers’ places the discussion squarely in the agency camp. This does not necessarily mean, however, that one has to accept a ‘heroic’ interpretation of the past when great men bent the future to their will. Historians who choose this direction concentrate on the influences that moulded these personalities. Moreover, if we do decide to retain this focus, there are plenty of routes from which to choose. For example, much has been made of the fact that many of the actors had grown up in border areas and were presumably less attached to the concepts of nation states – Robert Schuman in Luxembourg, when it was part of the German Zollverein, Alcide De Gasperi in the Southern Tyrol when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Konrad Adenauer in the Rhineland. Schuman became foreign minister of France, De Gasperi became prime minister of Italy and, of course, Adenauer became chancellor of West Germany. Another line of thought links their shared Roman Catholicism as a factor binding them together, though quite how this translates into their subsequent adoption of the European cause is less clear. Another link lies less through their religious faith as through the religious-based mass political parties that emerged after the war and the network of contacts that these allowed, which enabled the growth of a shared rhetoric and experience.

There is a more direct route to their shared political goals towards Europe and that is through political ideology.