Little anticipated by Abbé Pierre and the founders of Emmaus France, the structuring of the Emmaus movement in France would, over more than thirty years, take the form of multiple federations, before Emmaus France was set up in 1985, initiated by Emmaus International, which then brought together all the French groups.

In the wake of the enthusiasm generated by the 1954 appeal, the very young and still fragile Emmaus structure grew very quickly in terms of resources and activities, without this having been fully anticipated or organised. At the same time, Abbé Pierre was in high demand by the media and received repeated invitations to give speeches. Many people were called in to bolster Emmaus’ leadership and take charge of the organisation’s sudden human, financial and logistical growth.

In 1956, an exhausted Abbé Pierre was sent to Switzerland to rest, before he resumed a series of conferences that led him to travel around the world. These trips would provide the opportunity to lay down the first foundations of an international movement.

During this time, the French groups continued to get organised and, in 1958, the Central Union of Emmaus Communities (UCC) was created. It gathered just over ten Emmaus communities and was characterised by its desire to professionalise the organisation of the movement. It recruited externally, trained and employed community leaders nationally, and subsequently sent these leaders to the communities.

This organisation did not enjoy unanimous support within the movement, and Abbé Pierre himself had reservations on the subject. Following a series of disagreements with the UCC, the groups that disagreed with this approach decided to found the Union of Friends and Companions of Emmaus (UACE). This organisation contributed greatly to the development of the movement in the 1960s and 1970s by creating travelling communities and organising numerous youth camps.

At the same time, from the end of the 1960s onwards, a new Emmaus initiative was developed in France: the SOS Familles, combatting over-indebtedness. These groups were often linked locally to an Emmaus community, but they also created their own national federation.

In 1971, two large unions of communities federated the majority of Emmaus communities in France: the Central Union of Communities (UCC) and the Union of Friends and Companions of Emmaus (UACE). The member communities largely carried out the same collection, sorting and sales activities, but with notable differences in terms of their internal organisation, their understanding of solidarity and especially their links with Abbé Pierre. Since the split in 1956, they lived in mutual ignorance, sometimes even in conflict.

The 1971 Emmaus International General Assembly offered representatives the opportunity to meet in Montreal, and for many this was the first time. On the plane home, some of them decided to meet again in France, particularly as the country was established as an Emmaus International region, with a representative on the Board.

Of their own initiative, they created the Emmaus France Liaison Committee in 1972, which met regularly and carried out a number of collective actions on behalf of Emmaus to lobby French public authorities.

In 1977, the position of French representative on the Emmaus International Board became vacant, following the departure of the full member and then the substitute member. At the start of 1978, the Emmaus International Executive Committee asked the organisation to gather the Emmaus groups in France for them to elect their representative. This is how the first “Emmaus France National Conference” was organised on 10 and 11 June 1978.

The success of the Assises nationales (national conference) enabled the communities to meet in sub-regions and reach out to other types of Emmaus groups. The various factions came closer together and discussions on how to work together progressed, although this was not without clashes. In 1986, all the Emmaus groups (communities, the friends’ committees and other organisations) were brought together in a single entity: Emmaus France. This new entity became the spokesperson vis-à-vis the French public authorities and ran issue-based campaigns on behalf of all its members, but it would take another ten years or so for all the Emmaus groups to be united within this single federation. This rapprochement was driven by Jean Rousseau, who became president of Emmaus France in 1996 and proposed the adoption of new statutes that year.

At the same time, in 1988 Abbé Pierre decided to create the Abbé Pierre Foundation to provide housing to disadvantaged people. Unlike the Emmaus communities, this organisation runs public fundraising appeals for its work to combat poor housing. The Abbé Pierre Foundation is a member of Emmaus International.

In the early 2000s, Emmaus France began to look at ways of strengthening the existing organisation by structuring it into national “branches” for each type of activity and into “regions”. This new structure was finally adopted in 2006 with 3 branches (the Community branch, Social Action and Housing branch and Solidarity Economy and Integration branch), and 10 regions.

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