Robert Marjolin

Robert Marjolin (1964)

Robert Ernest Marjolin (born July 27, 1911 in Paris , † April 15, 1986 in Paris) was a French European politician.

Robert Majolin was born the son of a master saddler and had to leave school in Paris at the age of 14 to earn a living. In addition to work, he attended evening schools and was finally able to enroll at the Sorbonne . A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled him to study sociology and economics at Yale University in America in 1931 . In 1934 he completed both courses with the state examination. In 1936 he also passed the state examination in law and received his doctorate in this subject. From 1938 he worked as chief assistant to Charles Rist at the economic institute in Paris. His research during this time as well as his later political work was strongly influenced by the American New Deal : Marjolin dealt primarily with production and price developments as well as currency policy.

After Germany's victory over France in World War II , Marjolin joined the advisory staff of the French government-in-exile under Charles de Gaulle in Great Britain. There he was responsible for economic questions and already in the final phase of the war drafted reconstruction plans for France and all of Europe. In 1943 he represented the government-in-exile in Washington as head of a purchasing mission. There he met his future wife, an American painter. He turned down attempts from the American economy to win him for a leading position.

After the war, Marjolin was first head of the foreign trade department in the French Ministry of Economic Affairs and then State Secretary at the Commissioner for French Reconstruction. In this role he set the course for the economic development of France in the following decades. In contrast to Ludwig Erhard in Germany, he relied on greater control of the economy by the state. This contrast was to determine the relationship between French and German economic policy in the remainder of the 20th century. In addition, Marjolin mainly dealt with the use of the Marshall Plan aid in Europe. In August 1947 he published a corresponding memorandum, which in the US Parliament had an influence on further aid for Europe. In 1948 Robert Marjolin was appointed Secretary General of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). In the last few years of his activity in particular, he tried to dissuade the organization from becoming a purely technocratic authority for the administration of European economic relations. Rather, he wanted to become politically active in order to achieve an increasingly political integration of Europe based on the economy. At the end of 1954 he surprisingly submitted his resignation from the General Secretariat of the OEEC on the grounds that he did not want to become an “international civil servant”.

After this step, Robert Marjolin was briefly head of cabinet in the French Foreign Ministry under Pineau and economics professor at the University of Nancy . In the negotiations on the EEC Treaty from 1955 he led the French delegation. He attached particular importance to the establishment of a common economic, financial and currency policy and received the support of the German delegation leader Alfred Müller-Armack and his deputy Hans von der Groeben .

In 1958 he was accepted into the EEC Commission under Walter Hallstein as responsible for economy and finance as well as for external relations and competition . In November 1962, Marjolin ran for the Socialists in the French parliamentary election, which, if successful, would have meant his departure from the commission. The candidacy was hopeless.

Honors

1955: Great Cross of Merit with Star and Shoulder Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany
1963: Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Web links

Newspaper article about Robert Marjolin in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

personal data
SURNAME	Marjolin, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Marjolin, Robert Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French European politician
DATE OF BIRTH	July 27, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH	Paris
DATE OF DEATH	April 15, 1986
Place of death	Paris