Schuman Proposes Europe: The Birth of the EU

Robert Schuman stood at a lectern in the Salon de l'Horloge at the French Foreign Ministry on May 9, 1950, and read a statement that proposed something no European statesman had ever seriously attempted: placing the coal and steel industries of France and Germany under a joint supranational authority. The Schuman Declaration, drafted primarily by Jean Monnet, launched the process that created the European Union. The proposal's genius lay in its practical simplicity. Coal and steel were the essential raw materials of war. By pooling French and German production under a shared high authority with binding decision-making power, the two nations would make war between them "not merely unthinkable but materially impossible." Any country that did not control its own steel production could not independently arm for war. The timing was urgent. West Germany was recovering economically and would inevitably rebuild its industrial capacity. France faced a choice: contain Germany through restrictions that bred resentment, or bind Germany into a partnership that served both nations' interests. Monnet, who had spent his career as an international economic coordinator, saw supranational institutions as the only path that avoided repeating the failures of Versailles. Schuman, himself a product of the Franco-German borderland, having been born in Luxembourg and raised in Lorraine when it was German territory, understood the human dimension of the rivalry. He had been drafted into the German army in World War I and imprisoned by the Gestapo in World War II. His personal history embodied the absurdity of the conflict the declaration sought to end. Six nations signed the Treaty of Paris in 1951, creating the European Coal and Steel Community: France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The same six signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, establishing the European Economic Community. The ECSC's supranational structure, with its independent High Authority, Court of Justice, and parliamentary assembly, became the institutional blueprint for every subsequent stage of European integration. May 9 is now celebrated as Europe Day.