France and the construction of Europe, 1944-2007 : the geopolitical imperative

In the second half of the twentieth century France played the greatest role - even greater than Germany’s - in shaping what eventually became the European Union.

By the early twenty-first century, however, in a hugely transformed Europe, this era had patently come to an end.

This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a sixty-year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate’s referendum rejection of the European Union’s constitutional treaty in 2005.