ABSTRACT

A handful of day-dreamers nurtured the vision of a federal United States of Europe already in the nineteenth century – one of them being the famous French writer, Victor Hugo. After the devastating Great War of 1914-18, the Austrian Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi formed the Pan-Europe Movement, and the French Prime Minister Aristide Briand proposed establishing a federal Europe to the League of Nations. These movements and proposals, however, went nowhere.