La vision francaise de l'Europe. Des Etats-Unis d'Europe de Victor Hugo au Non à la Constitution
The French Vision of Europe. From Victor Hugo’s Etats-Unis d’Europe to the Reject of the Constitution

Summary/Abstract: Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the few nineteenth-century European writers and intellectuals who, during this very nationalistic epoch, expressed a consistent theory of European political and economic unification. The idea of the « United States of Europe » is as far-reaching and, for most people, utopian today as it was in his time. Nonetheless, some of Hugo’s ideas have been materialized, such as the monetary union, and the disappearance of national borders within the Schengen heartland. This paper tries to evaluate the complex interplay, in the European integration, between utopia and realpolitik.

• Details
• Contents