Jean Monnet

Born in November 1888, Monnet spent decades as a civil servant, diplomat, and financier moving between American and European power centers. In mid-June 1940 he met Charles de Gaulle in London during the Battle of France, beginning a thirty-year relationship that cycled between alliance and suspicion. Through the 1950s Monnet engineered the European Coal and Steel Community, the structure that preceded today's Union, doing it all from behind the scenes as what colleagues called a "pragmatic internationalist." In 1976 he became the first person named Honorary Citizen of Europe. France moved his…