In this interview, Alain Lamassoure, Policy Officer then Technical Adviser to Jean-Pierre Fourcade in the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance, then in the Ministry of Regional Planning, from 1974 to 1978, former Technical Adviser at the General Secretariat of the French Presidency from 1978 to 1981 and Member of the French National Assembly for the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département from 1986 to 1993, discusses the origins of his European commitment, the European dimension of his first posts and particularly the formation of a joint committee known as Pénélope, which was composed of a number of MPs.