Felix Esquirou de Parieu

Felix Marie Louis Pierre Esquirou de Parieu (April 13rd 1815 with Aurillac - April 8th 1893 with Paris) is a French statesman. In its political career, it in particular was Ministre for the State education and the worships of October 31st 1849 at January 24th 1851 and minister chairing the Council of State from January 2nd to August 9th 1870. It is even more known like one of the precursors of the European thought.

Biography

Wire of a dynastic line deputy, Esquirou de Parieu is initially lawyer. It shows adversary of the presidential election to the Vote for all male in December 1848 and recommends the American system rather. After the resignation of Falloux and a few months of interim, it is called with the ministry for the State education, at one time when the question of teaching makes the subject of debate impassioned. To ensure a better financial position the teachers, it makes adopt, on January 11th 1850, the law which bears its name, known as “small law on education”. But its principal task is to make vote - on March 15th, 1850 - then to carry out the law which its predecessor had prepared and who, while reorganizing the university hierarchy completely, placed in fact the departmental academies under the aegis of the clergy. It is used thus the interests of the catholics by taking muscular measures for the opposition to the teachers in republican-Socialists majority, which causes sharp movements in the teaching medium. It adopts later the coup d'etat of the Prince-president.

It is named to advise State in 1852 when it chairs the section of finances, then becomes vice-president of the Council of State of 1865 to 1870, year when he is named Ministre chairing the Council of State until the end of the Empire.

He is elected member of the Academy of Science morals and political in 1865.

Parieu and projects of monetary Union: a visionary of Europe

Parieu becomes one of the most eminent French specialists in the monetary question and, as from 1858, it is one of the most determined lawyers of the European monetary unification. Luca Einaudi said of him that it was in the 1865 “suitable man to carry out a monetary diplomacy… a curious mixture of political realism and utopian aspirations. ”

Parieu chaired conference monetary of 1865, which gave rise to the Latin Monetary Union and was for a great part its work, as well as the monetary conference of 1867, which tried to widen this union in an European Union, even world, founded on a universal coining.

This invitation to adopt a common coining for all the “civilized nations” was the result of economic factors related on the development of free trade and the emergence of the first federalistic ideas in Europe. Parieu symbolized the liberal character of it.

Since 1865, it expressed the intention of the French government to transform the Latin Monetary Union and to consider “a broader prospect, that of a uniform money circulation for all Europe. ” He proposed into 1867 to introduce a common Monnaie based on the coin of 10 francs, called “Europe”, in a “Western European Union”, whose name could be changed if the United States would express their desire to take part in it.

Seon him, a European monetary Union based on the Gold Standard would offer a “rich and comfortable metal circulation, the possibility of an agreement with more the commercial great power of Europe, England, like with Germany… Gradual destruction in the economic order of one of these frequent barriers which divide the nations, and whose reduction would facilitate their mutual insurance company moral conquest, thus being used as prelude to the peaceful federations of the future. ”

This reference to the peaceful federations of the future is all the more revealing as Parieu anticipated, in its work Principes of Political science , published in 1870, the institutional structure of the European Union after the Second world war. Thus, Parieu described a federal framework, a “European Union” directed by a “European commission” whose members would be named by the national governments, joined later by the “European Parliament. ” This federation was to prevent other European wars and to carry out the pooling of a currency, transport, of a post office and diplomatic representations.

Parieu was conscious of the character visionary of its ambitions and declared with a Sénat imperial skeptic in 1870: “In the history of humanity, the generous Utopia of yesterday can be transformed into a practical and feasible creation of tomorrow, because the world progressed. ”

The federalistic positions of Parieu, well in advance over its time, contributed to give a intellectual credibility and a depth to the French project, beyond any attempt at hegemonic interpretation.

The conference of 1867, aiming at “supporting the establishment of a uniform money circulation between all the civilized states” joins together all the European States, the Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the the United States to discuss the possibilities of creating a monetary union. Parieu chaired the majority of the eight meetings of the conference and concludes on the fact that “the whole world agrees on the benefit which must generate a monetary unit. ”

But this conference failed, at the same time because of the little of enthusiasm which showed the England and of the Prussia and because of the solved opposition of the Central banks. This failure left bitter and politically marginalized Parieu.

It is interesting to note that the same considerations governed the development at the XXe century of the project of Union economic and monetarist (UEM) and that this project met same resistances as to the XIXe century. They were raised only by the policy change of Germany (but not of the the United Kingdom) and by the fact that the central banks, being nationalized, were not in position to maintain an opposition as systematic as to the XIXe century.

Publications

the monetary Question in France and abroad , Re-examined contemporary, December 31st (1865).
monetary Union of France, of Italy, of Belgium and Switzerland: Latin Münzverein , Re-examined Contemporary, October 31st (1866).
Of the monetary uniformity . Newspaper of the economists, June, (1867) pp. 321-356.
Principles of political science , (Paris, 1870).
the Monetary policy in France and Germany , (1872).

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