Created in 1957 by Professor Henri Rieben, the Red books collection now includes 221 titles. Conceived as a vehicle for sharing and exchanging knowledge, it continues to be enriched regularly with new publications. The main concern of the collection is to address a wide audience. Since its creation, the collection has responded to the twofold imperative of fueling the debate on the integration process by publishing studies and position papers, and of safeguarding and spreading the memory of European construction by collecting and publishing testimonies of the protagonists.
Publication of a new Red Book this September 2026
The 221th Red Book is entitled «Die Institutionen der europäischen Gemeinschaften und der europäischen Union : Kontinuität und Wandel, 1950-2025». Gilles Grin, doctor in international relations and academician, is the director of the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe in Lausanne. He is also a lecturer at the University of Lausanne.
The text is available in open access. Just click on the cover image below to access the full text.
Gilles Grin
This contribution reviews the history of the institutions of the European Communities (EC) and then of the European Union (EU) from 1950 to 2025. It begins with a discussion of the first European Community : the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It describes how the European Economic Community (EEC) was formed in 1958, and the EU in 1993, and examines the shift that has taken place in the orientation of European integration. The goal is to show how, throughout their history, European institutions have demonstrated aspects of both continuity and change. The contribution illustrates how difficult it has been over the past 15 years to revise EU treaties. It follows with considerations on the nature of the EU as a political entity. The conclusions weigh up the factors of continuity and change and propose ten theses on the history of European integration.
Publication of a new Red Book this January 2025
The 220th Red Book is entitled “L’Europe: un chemin unique au Monde. La culture politique dans l’Union européenne.” Gret haller, the author, has had several professional lives: first as a lawyer, then as a member of the National Council, President of the national Council, Swiss Ambassador to the Council of Europe, then as a Human Rights mediator in Sarajevo, Europe has always been with her. She now turns to political writing, which the Foundation has the honour of publishing.
The text is available in open access. Just click on the cover image below to access the full text.
Hard copies of the book can be purchased individually at a price of CHF 20 in Switzerland and CHF 35 outside of Switzerland, including postage, from the Foundation’s secretariat (+41 21 692 20 90 / secr@nullfjme.unil.ch).For delivery outside Europe, the price will depend on the postage charges applied.
Gret Haller
Gret Haller looks at a political entity with 27 Member States and over 448 million people: the European Union. After the horrors of two world wars, six states gave up some of their national sovereignty and founded the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 as a guarantee of peace.
The author looks at the institutional and human fabric of this heterogeneous union. For her, if there is a political culture of the Union, it lies more in the way the Member States relate to each other, influencing each other while retaining their differences. Gret Haller sees the acceptance of otherness as an opportunity for understanding.
This book is a contribution to a return to the fundamental values of democracy and the rule of law, and to the peace initiative that gave birth to the European Union, in the face of the strengthening of totalitarian systems and anti-EU currents within Europe.
Publication of a new Red Book this October 2022
The 219th Red Book is entitled “The Rebirth of Europe after the War: hopes, divisions and failure among the French Resistance (1942-1947)”. Robert BELOT, the author, is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Lyon-Saint-Etienne, holder of the Jean Monnet European Chair “EUPOPA”. He heads the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree DYCLAM+.
The text is available in open access. Just click on the cover image below to access the full text.
Hard copies of the book can be purchased individually at a price of CHF 20 in Switzerland and CHF 35 outside of Switzerland, including postage, from the Foundation’s secretariat (+41 21 692 20 90 / secr@nullfjme.unil.ch).For delivery outside Europe, the price will depend on the postage charges applied.
Robert Belot
The anti-Europeans of today organize their propaganda undermining the honorability and sincerity of the pioneers of the united Europe. They revise history in order to relativize the prescience and the courage of an elite that wanted to learn from the drama that Europe has known with fascism, Nazism and war. This book is a refutation against this “fake Knowledge”.
The highlighting of the itinerary of Henri Frenay, founder of the most important movement of the French Resistance, minister of General de Gaulle at the Liberation, who became one of the leaders of the European Union of federalists, allows us to rediscover one of the living sources of the desire for Europe and peace of those who have risked the worst for our freedom.
The idea of building a federal and democratic Europe was shared by the non-communist European Resistances, be they Italian, Romanian, German, Belgian or Dutch. It took shape in Switzerland, within the exile communities, and gave birth to the first Declaration of the European Resistances (July 1944). But this choice was a new struggle, sometimes violent. He encountered opposing forces, sometimes also from the Resistance, hostile to this project of overcoming national interests and sentiment.