Hervé Alphand

Nationality

France

Date of Birth

1907

Date of Death

1994

Political
Preference

Hervé Alphand was born into a family of diplomats, he studied law and graduated in political science.

At the outbreak of World War II, Alphand was in Washington, where he worked as the financial attaché at the French Embassy. He opposed the Vichy-regime and resigned in 1941 to join Charles de Gaulle’s Free French as Director of Economic Affairs. In wartime London, Alphand became involved in the discussions about post-war economic and monetary reconstruction, to which he actively contributed with ideas about regional monetary cooperation. For example, he was present at the financial talks which were hosted by John Maynard Keynes at the U.K. Treasury in 1942 and 1943.

When the Comité français de Libération nationale was created in Algiers in 1943, Alphand followed De Gaulle to Algiers. In Algiers, Alphand belonged to a group of financial experts (together with Robert Marjolin) around Jean Monnet. Over the summer of 1943 Alphand, Marjolin and Monnet started to articulate plans for the post-war economic integration of Europe.

After the liberations of Paris in 1944, Alphand became the Director of Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here he played a leading role in Franco-American relations. He was representative of France at the Conference for European Economic Cooperation (CEEC) in Paris between July and September 1947. In October 1947 he was one of the conference representatives to travel to Washington for discussions with the members of the President’s Committee on Foreign Aid about the proposals for a European Recovery Program (ERP).

During the CEEC in Paris in 1947, Alphand proposed the creation of a European customs union. While this idea was not accepted by all of his European partners, a European Customs Union Study Group (ECUSG) was created. Moreover, conversations of the creation of a customs union with Italy were initiated.

In 1956, Alphand returned to Washington as the French ambassador, which he would remain until 1965.