Schuman Declaration

On 9 May 1950, the French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed that France and West Germany place their entire coal and steel output under a shared supranational authority that other European countries could join. Drafted largely by Jean Monnet, the plan aimed to make another war between the two old enemies impossible by binding their key industries together. It led to the European Coal and Steel Community, the first step on the road to today's European Union, and 9 May is now celebrated as Europe Day.

The declaration came the day after the fifth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. The continent was now divided by the Cold War, and there was a widespread wish to avoid a repeat of two catastrophic wars. Winston Churchill had called for a Council of Europe, and the United States, through the Marshall Plan, required European countries to use its aid in a coordinated way.

Coal and steel lay at the heart of the old rivalry. Before the war France had been the world's largest coal importer, and its post-war modernisation plan, devised by Monnet, depended on German coal. Germans feared that France wanted their coal as cheaply as possible to boost French steelmaking, while the French worried that German industry would enjoy better access to its own coal. As prime minister in 1947–1948 and then foreign minister, Schuman had moved French policy away from the goal of permanent control over German regions such as the Ruhr and the Saar, and towards integrating Germany into a wider community. He had spoken of pooling European resources in a supranational body as early as May 1949.

Monnet prepared the text with the help of the international lawyer Paul Reuter and Etienne Hirsch. Earlier on 9 May, Schuman received assurance that the West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, supported the idea, and the French cabinet approved it the same day. The declaration argued that European unity required an end to the long Franco-German antagonism. Placing coal and steel production under a common High Authority, whose decisions would bind its members, would create solidarity in production that would make war between France and Germany "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". Schuman presented the plan as the first concrete foundation of a European federation, and it also aimed to break up cartels, revive the economy and raise living standards.

Adenauer called the plan a breakthrough, and Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands also responded positively. Britain stayed out; its prime minister, Clement Attlee, objected to handing the economy to an authority he regarded as unaccountable. On 18 April 1951 the six countries signed the Treaty of Paris, creating the European Coal and Steel Community, which began operating in July 1952 with Monnet as the first president of the High Authority. It created a common market for coal and steel without customs duties or restrictive practices, alongside a parliamentary assembly and a court.

The declaration marked the start of post-war Franco-German cooperation and helped reintegrate West Germany into Western Europe. The Community served as the model for the European Economic Community and Euratom, created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and its institutions were merged with theirs in 1967. The Treaty of Paris expired on 23 July 2002, and the Community's work passed to the wider European framework. Schuman later became the first president of the forerunner of the European Parliament, which honoured him as the "Father of Europe".

Our 1945 map shows a Europe devastated and divided by the war, and our 1960 map shows the six founding states of the Community alongside the rest of Cold War Europe.