Sir Winston Churchill called for the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’ in his famous 1946 Zurich speech and Presided the first European Federal Congress at the Hague in 1948. He was one of the key fathers of a united Europe and set in motion ideas and events which would develop and grow to become the European Union.

At this point in Churchill's speech he addresses the phenomena, now termed 'regionalism', of the forming of regional blocs of nations.