In Memory of Robert Toulemon (1927 - 2020)

Jean-Francis Billion
UEF-France Vice-President, ex WFM Council member and President of Presse fédéraliste

Robert Toulemon passed away in Paris on July 5 and was buried in his native village in Dordogne where he was born almost a century earlier, Montagnac la Crempse, a small community he considered his “little fatherland’’ in the well-known French region Périgord (administratively called Dordogne).

In the very first pages of his memoirs, Souvenirs européens (1950-2005)^[i], he expressed the reasons of his lifelong commitment to Federalism.

‘‘Educated in the horror of war […], the book by the Hungarian-born American Emery Reves, The Anatomy of Peace^[ii] […] was for me a revelation. […] The States' absolute sovereignty means war. The survival of Humanity requires the abdication of sovereignties in favor of a World Government. […] I vibrated in the Palais de Chaillot, within a crowd of students, hearing the allocution of the young world-citizen Garry Davis […] claiming the establishment of a World Government. I would rather quickly understand that such an objective would remain for long out of reach and that regional groupings should come first and prepare it. At the end of my life, my conviction remains very firm that the future of civilization and probably of the human race depend on Humanity's capacity to form a supranational power’’^[iii].

Robert followed the school of the Jesuit priests in Sarlat (Périgord), like a few years before did our federalist colleague Bernard Lesfargues^[iv], whom I met several times since the early 2000. Later on, Robert continued his studies at Toulouse University (1944), at the Paris Political Sciences Institute (1949) where he will also teach (1958-60, 1974-80), and finally at the famous École Nationale d’Administration (ENA, 1950-53) that forms senior civil servants. Robert’s first job was at the French Ministry of Finances and Economic Affairs (1956). This is when he joined as an active member the Jean Moulin Club, where he met some people and personalities close to the Federalist Movements such as Stéphane Hessel, Pierre Uri, Étienne Hirsch (future President of the Euratom and of the French MFE), Georges Vedel, André Jeanson (future General Secretary of the French Trade Union CFDT and one of the founders, after the events of May 1968, of the Comité de liaison et d’action fédéraliste [Liaison and Action Federalist Committee]), or future high-rank politicians such as Jacques Delors. There, he sometimes had to defend his strong pro-European feelings.

‘‘Stéphane Hessel sometimes invited me at his home […] to private meetings regarding Europe. It is on one of these occasions that I first met Altiero Spinelli, one of the men who marked my whole life. His fiery nature, his eloquence, the rigor of his arguments, his faith, his fierce willing to convince seduced me immediately. His federalist speeches revamped my intuitions. He swept aside the hesitations and cautions in regard of Europe expressed by my friends of the Club’’^[v].

In early 1962, Jean Dromer, an adviser at the presidential Élysée Palace, proposed to Robert to move to Brussels in order to become Head of Cabinet of the French Vice-President of the European Commission, Robert Marjolin, an ex-Deputy of Jean Monnet in the French planning administration. ‘‘This proposal delighted me: […] it offered me the unexpected perspective to work on what appeared to me as the great masterwork, the great purpose of my generation’’^[vi]. Robert arrived in Brussels in early June 1962, and he started to dedicate himself to the European Commission, firstly with Marjolin and then with Spinelli.

It is in 1970, on the occasion of the renewal of the Commission for a four years mandate, that Robert met Spinelli again and worked with him on Research and Environment problems.

‘‘I learned with bewilderment that the Italian Government was proposing to replace Prince Guido Colonna Paliano with the former communist become federalist Altiero Spinelli. […] I had met him on various occasions in Brussels, in federalist meetings. I heard him, not without perplexity, stigmatizing Hallstein's caution. He would have liked the Commission to appeal to the public opinion against the Governments which, openly or hypocritically, were refusing to give Europe the means to exist and act. Then, the troublemaker was to enter the group of the Commissioners and was to confront himself with the necessities of reality. Taking Colonna's position, he would be my boss. […] The perspective of working with Spinelli delighted me. I will not be disappointed. His strength of convincing was intact. He arrived in Brussels crowned in glory for having converted the Italian Left to European Federalism, and specifically Pietro Nenni, leader of the left-wing Socialists and close to the Communists, to whom his appointment was due’’^[vii].

Back to France in 1973, Robert devoted himself to various positions for the French Government: Cabinet Director of Pierre Abelin, Cooperation Minister (1974-76); Chief Representative of André Fosset, Minister of Quality of life - 1976. In parallel, he founded the Association d’études pour l’Union européenne (AFEUR, 1974 – Association for European Union Studies) and, later on, the AFEUR-ARRI Club of which he was the President. He joined the French section of the International European Movement and MFE (before UEF) and represented the writer Joseph Rovan in Prague in October 1990 on the occasion of the Conference of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly, created by the Bertrand Russell Foundation for Peace, which included Europeans from both the East and the West.

‘‘There I discovered a European Civil Society looking for Peace, Freedom, Democracy and conscious of the threats to the new Europe posed by the resurgence of ethno-nationalist confrontations. I note, on behalf of Rovan, the words of Jorge Semprun calling the non-communist Left to self-criticism for its too long indulgence in regards of tyrants; of Edgar Morin, establishing a parallel between the sovereignty by divine right of Kings and that of Nation States; of the Czech Minister Sabata in favor of a better organized and united humanity, beyond ideological barriers. Rovan will be surprised to learn about the participation of some fifty compatriots, among them seven Corsican autonomists belonging to an eco-pacifist grouping’’^[viii].

This tribute to Robert would not be complete without mentioning his cordial and friendly relations with another famous French Federalist, Alexandre Marc, whom he met on several occasions, in Paris, Brussells and Nice especially, and with whom he collaborated at his Centre international de formation européenne (CIFE), participating in various Colloquiums in France, Belgium, Canada and various Eastern European Countries after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. He was also elected later President of the Federal Committee of CIFE in Sevilla (Spain, November 1997).

I met Robert initially in early 2000 in Paris, when our common friend Jean-Pierre Gouzy introduced us on the occasion of a pro-European meeting. But it seems we might in fact have met long before, in the mid 1970’s, as the two of us were members, as well as Lesfargues, of MFE-France National Commission! But none of the three of us remembered when I (re)introduced Bernard to Robert later on, maybe because we had all missed a specific meeting in spring 1975 in Avignon…^[ix] Robert and I knew anyway each other by name, and he already had allowed me to publish some of his articles in Fédéchoses earlier. What surprise was for him to hear that Denise and I had just bought a summer house a few hundred yards from his native house!

I am convinced that this amazing circumstance played a role in our future friendship. This is how I suggested him to send his papers to the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence, at the European University Institute, and also why we could get some financial support by the Archives for Presse Fédéraliste to publish Robert’s Memoirs.

When Robert asked me in late 2017 to organize for him a meeting at Bernard home, three months only before his death, this long meeting was to be one of the most emotional moments in my life. These two nonagenarian men have been lifelong federalists and cosmopolitans, but at the same time so viscerally attached to Périgord and his cultural heritage, as their common membership in some historical and cultural Societies bear witness.

Lastly, let me recall that Robert convinced a few years ago one of his closest friends, the well-known Economist Michel Albert, to accept the UEF-France Honorary Presidency and that both of them strongly supported some European or World Federalist initiatives in the most recent years, such as the ‘‘New Deal 4 Europe’’ or the “United Nations Parliamentary Assembly’’ campaigns.

^[i] R. Toulemon, Souvenirs européens, 1950-2005, coll. «Carnet d’Europe», Presse fédéraliste, 2012

^[ii] Published 1945 in New York, later on in France.

^[iii] R. Toulemon, op. cit., p. 9.

^[iv] Occitan and French Writer, Translator, Poet and Publisher, active in federalist movements since the mid 1940’s, linked to UEF since its founding in 1946 and member of some Occitan autonomist and cultural circles. See my ‘‘Tribute to Bernard Abel Lesfargues ’’ in The Federalist Debate, XXXI Year, n° 2, 2018.

^[v] R. Toulemon, op. cit.,, pp. 29.30.

^[vi] Ibid., p. 33.

^[vii] Ibid., p. 94.

^[viii] Ibid., p. 238.

^[ix] See‘‘Commission Nationale – Avignon – 13/14 Septembre 1975’’, XXVI Year, n° 71, new Series n° 8, December 1975, recently found in Bernard’s federalist Archives when working on an Essay for the cultural occitanist Garona review, linked to the University of Bordeaux.