Communauté européenne de Défense et Communauté politique européenne: les propositions d’Alcide De Gasperi

In the early fifties, Alcide De Gasperi made a decisive commitment for the political unification of Europe. Peace was at the centre of his concerns, and he saw the European federation as a “myth of peace.” Sharing the ideas of the federalists, he went beyond the project of a European Defence Community proposed by the French. He fought tenaciously to link the European Army to the creation of a European political Community, and therefore to the birth of a “European homeland,” and to transform the functional approach into a federalist approach.