Introduction
Martí Grau i Segú
Head of service and curator , Jean Monnet House , European Parliament
When it comes to European unity , 2021 is a year of double celebration . Seventy years ago , the signing of the Treaty of Paris paved the way for the first European Community , devoted to the sharing of Coal and Steel Production . It was the very first practical step towards the integration of our continent . Eighty years ago , on the tiny Italian of Ventotene , in the heat of WWII , a group of prison inmates wrote a compelling blueprint for a future without war , with the title For a Free and United Europe . A Draft Manifesto .
At the Jean Monnet House in Houjarray ( France ), we have had the opportunity to commemorate the Treaty of Paris , and we are now happy to join forces with the European Observatory on Memories and the Istituto di Studi Federalisti Altiero Spinelli to mark the 80th anniversary of the Manifesto of Ventotene .
In our age of uncertainty , does such remembrance matter ? The two events were very different in nature . The former signalled an unprecedented institutional move on the international arena : for the
18