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The Conférence Molé-Tocqueville, known as the Molé-Tocqueville, is the oldest students’ association in France and one of the oldest exclusive private students’ clubs in Europe. Being almost 200 years old, the Molé-Tocqueville and its members have been key players in French history. In 1897, thanks to a presidential decree, the Conférence Molé-Tocquveille became a recognized public-interest organization.

Louis-Mathieu Molé, French statesman and 18th Prime Minister of France founded the Conférence de l’Hôtel Molé in 1832. At the beginning, he received young students to train them for public speech in the Hôtel Molé on Boulevard Saint-Germain, which is now the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy. In 1876, the Conférence Molé merged with the Conférence Tocqueville to become the Conférence Molé-Tocqueville. Having lived in exile, both in Switzerland and in Great Britain, Molé’s ideas were shaped by English debating societies such as the Cambridge Union (reated in 1815) and the Oxford Union (created in 1823). Yet the French eloquence conference also finds its French roots in the “special conferences” or “chitchat” in which young lawyers became familiar with the techniques of legal argument and debate in the 18th century. This dual heritage is a constituent part of the existing Conférence Molé-Tocqueville. Molé’s will was to create a society that would train an elite of students for the highest offices.

Political Influence
The Conférence Molé-Tocqueville had its heyday in the middle of the 19th century by hosting regular and very well attended parliamentary debates and very important banquets. The Friday sessions were held at first in the cité du Retiro, now the registered office of the Qatar Investment Authority,then they moved to rue des Saint-Pères at the Académie de Médecine (Medical Academy) and ultimately to the Geographical Society on boulevard Saint-Germain. The Friday sessions rapidly became an institution and even received media coverage. It was considered one of the most politically influential associations, at a time when political parties where not constituted yet. It truly was what Raymond Poincaré (former French president and member) a “Centre for high parliamentary studies”, holding a unique place in the associative landscape given it has provided the French society with a significant number of statesmen, laywers, diplomats, industrialists and businessmen among which Jules Ferry, Georges Clémenceau, François Mitterrand, Aristide Briand André Citroën or Pierre Taittinger. 12 Presidents of the French Republic were former members of the Molé-Tocqueville, and Napoléon III was also an honorary member. The Molé-Tocqueville became the biggest pool of politicians under the third and fourth French Republics. As Le Gaulois, which was a French newspaper specialised in politics and literature that merged with Le Figaro, underlined it in 1929: “ The names of its founding fathers are, for most of them, bound to French history. Most leading politicians were part of the Conférence Molé-Tocqueville and began honing their skills among its members”. In 1897, thanks to a presidential decree, the Conférence Molé-Tocquveille became a recognized public-interest organization.

The Molé-Tocqueville’s working groups tackled topical subjects which where then debated. Lots of those debates will shape the spirit of the 3rd Republic, and some of them were recognized as founding principles of the Republic (Principes Fondamentaux Reconnus par les Lois de la République – PFRLR, 1974). Numerous members of the Molé-Tocqueville were involved in the Academic Group for the League of Nations (GUSN), and some of them were founding members. In 1935, Le Figaro even qualified the international meeting held in Geneva on February 3rd as the “Conférence Molé-Tocqueville of Nations”. More recently (2015), Pierre Brossolette’s ashes were transferred the Pantheon. He was a French journalist, politician and resistant who died in 1944. He was General-Secretary of the Conférence Molé-Tocqueville from 1940 to 1942, and through him lots of members decided to resist Nazi occupation.



The modern Olympic Games
On June 23, 1894, at the Sorbonne (Paris), delegates from nine countries founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC). From that day dates the revival of the Olympic Games. The idea goes back to a young man of good family, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Educator and sportsman, as of course he discovered in England the place of sport in the education and training of elites. He marveled. The idea that sport contributes to the development of personality and character formation will not self then. Many doctors and teachers oppose it in the name of health and discipline!

Pierre de Coubertin in 1892 advance the idea of ​​recreating the Olympic Games and to "internationalize the sport." He was only 29 years old. Two years later the IOC is based and four years later was the first games held. They meet in all and for all in Athens 311 athletes representing 13 nations and 9 disciplines. Both say they hardly collect echo in the European Landernau. But the young baron will gradually impose its conception of sport as a means of personal development and social cohesion instrument, to be overwhelmed by its success.

The United Nations
The Mole-Tocqueville Conference saw its members participate in the Academic Group for the League of Nations (GUSN) also will some of them were founding members. This earned the journalist James Donnadieu in the national daily: Le Figaro, compare Saturday, February 4, 1935, the international meeting in Geneva on February 3 as "the Mole-Tocqueville Conference of nations". Conservatory rites and procedures the Mole Conference is perhaps even more the conservatory a certain mindset that attachment to the deliberation and its virtues. From this perspective, we can say it provides an integration function for the benefit of the system in place th institution. We borrow from the history of some cadets right a number of specific examples to illustrate this last point. Alongside these shifts or these dramatic changes, it is especially important to highlight the relationship between this qualifying and we gladly call the love of parliamentary business, the desire to do well and the will to take seriously institutional practice.

The Club
The Mole-Tocqueville operates a brewing between elites. There was first a mixing of generations, since the meetings also attract many very young students curious policy that former great possibly eager to spot new talent. Then there was a stirring among militeux. The Conference probably first appears as a pillar in the Republic of lawyers. But besides the representatives of the bar we find very many journalists, significant contingent of senior officials and public "Parisian", straddling the beautiful world and a literary environment. Especially the old institution said its ability to live together representatives of virtually all political currents. The lists suggest that we have established a clear predominance of moderate environments and the left who attends the Mole is a bourgeois left, even when it is socialist.

According to Julian Whright Proffessor at Durham University : "The Conférence Molé-Tocqueville, one of a group of associations that had much in common with the Oxford and Cambridge Unions as a training ground for future legal and political starts, drew its participants from different part of the political spectrum”