“Of course one can jump up and down yelling Europe! Europe! Europe! But it amounts to nothing and it means nothing.”

—  Charles de Gaulle

Bien entendu, on peut sauter sur sa chaise comme un cabri en disant l’Europe ! l’Europe ! l’Europe ! mais cela n’aboutit à rien et cela ne signifie rien.
Interview on a presidential campaign, December 1965 INA archive of the video http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php?vue=notice&id_notice=I00012536 (De Gaulle meant that he wanted to build a European Union on realities, i.e. the existing nation-states with their respective interests – not on slogans and abstractions)
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Charles de Gaulle photo
Charles de Gaulle 46
eighteenth President of the French Republic 1890–1970

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