Johan Willem Beyen

Nationality

Netherlands

Date of Birth

1897

Date of Death

1976

Political
Preference

Independent

Johan Willem Beyen grew up in Utrecht and studied law at Utrecht University. He started his career at the Dutch Ministry of Finance, and afterwards held several positions in the business sector, eventually as director of Unilever. Beyen is regarded as one of the Founding Fathers of the European Union.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Beyen rapidly made a career in the international world of finance. After working at Philips, the Javasche Bank and the Rotterdamsche Bank, he became Director of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basle in 1937 – a position he held until 1939 when war broke out. In 1933, he was also present at the World Economic Conference in London.

When World War II broke out in The Netherlands, Beyen worked for Unilever, and managed to escape to London. Here he soon became one of the most important financial advisers to the Dutch government-in-exile. He frequently published about his ideas for post-war European economic cooperation, which was to be based on monetary methods. Moreover, he believed the goal of economic reconstruction and monetary cooperation should be improving social conditions. From his influential position at the Dutch governments, Beyen became involved in the financial talks hosted by John Maynard Keynes at the U.K. Treasury. Beyen represented the Dutch government at the United Nations Conference at Bretton Woods (1944) where the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created.

Directly after the war, Beyen became the Dutch representative in the board of the World Bank and from 1948 also in that of the IMF. In 1952, Beyen was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he shared with Joseph Luns. In this role he campaigned for European integration through the creation of the European Economic Community.

Beyen realized that European integration in the political field would be impossible without first strengthening economic cooperation. He endorsed the supranational approach to European integration promoted by Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, but opposed the sectoral approach. In 1952 he argued for rapid economic integration and the creation of a common market without customs and tariffs.

Beyen believed that this European common market should be guided by a supranational authority that had powers of its own. Beyen headed the Dutch delegation during the Messina Conference in 1955, and with the back-up from his Belgian and Luxembourg colleagues, Paul-Henri Spaak and Joseph Bech, a final resolution was adopted that largely reflected Beyen’s point of view. Beyen’s plans formed the basis that would lead to the to the Treaties of Rome 1957 and the formation of the European Economic Community and Euratom in 1958.