Forging Europe: Vichy France and the origins of the European Union

In the decade following the end of the Second World War, France was a driving force behind European integration, with initiatives like the Monnet Plan and the Schuman Declaration. In this lecture, Luc-André Brunet explains continuities from the wartime Vichy regime to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the forerunner to today’s European Union, and what this means for current debates about Europe.

Luc-André Brunet is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Europe at the Open University, Deputy Head of the Cold War Studies Project at LSE IDEAS, and Book Review Editor for the journal Cold War History.

Julian Jackson is Professor of Modern French History and Head of the School of History at Queen Mary University London.

Piers Ludlow is Deputy Head of Department and Director of Teaching Programmes at the LSE Department of International History.

LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. We connect academic knowledge of diplomacy and strategy with the people who use it.

The Open University is the UK's largest academic institution and a world pioneer in distance learning.

This event is free and open to all but registration is required. To register, please send your name, e-mail address, and company/university/organisation to ideas.events@lse.ac.uk. For further details, please visit the event page.