Politics

How coal and steel built the EU

In 1950 the Schuman Declaration ended Europe’s disastrous arms race and opened up the cooperation which created the EU. It still offers lessons for both May and Macron

May 09, 2017
French head of economic scheduling Jean Monnet (r) receives a box of printer's ink by state secretary Walter Hallstein (l) on the 7th of April in 1951 as Germany's contribution to the printing of the Schuman declaration ©dpa/DPA/PA Images
French head of economic scheduling Jean Monnet (r) receives a box of printer's ink by state secretary Walter Hallstein (l) on the 7th of April in 1951 as Germany's contribution to the printing of the Schuman declaration ©dpa/DPA/PA Images

Today marks the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration of 9th May 1950. Few in Brexiteer Britain will know about this moment when French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed what became the European Coal and Steel Community. This year’s anniversary is in any case eclipsed by the celebration in March of the 60th birthday of the Treaty of Rome, which created the far more ambitious European Economic Community, forerunner of today’s European Union. And that event was itself overshadowed by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, which formally took effect a few days later when Theresa May triggered the process that will lead to departure in two years’ time.

But the Schuman Declaration still holds lessons both for May—no matter whether she sweeps the board in June’s election—and for France’s president-elect Emmanuel Macron. For even more than the Treaty of Rome, the Schuman Declaration was the real turning-point in post-war European history leading towards the path of integration which Britain is now abandoning. Indeed Vernon Bogdanor, a research professor at King’s College London, has argued that May 9th 1950 was the most important date in the post-war history of western Europe.

That seems a tall claim for an arrangement covering two industries, today now shrunk to a small share of the European economy as services have become ever more pervasive. But at the time, coal and steel were central to heavy industry and manufacturing, which were then far more crucial. As importantly, they were the sinews of munitions in a Europe that had only just regained peace.

Above all, the coal and steel industries were wrapped in historical symbolism. France’s determination after the First World War to exact a Carthaginian peace brought about the occupation of Germany’s industrialised Ruhr in 1923 for the non-payment of war reparations. The intervention failed dismally as Germans adopted a policy of passive resistance. But it both contributed to the German hyperinflation of that year and ensured that France would bear some of the blame for an economic disaster that undermined faith in the Weimar Republic, making it vulnerable to Adolf Hitler during the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

The Schuman Declaration of 1950 marked a decisive break with this failed policy. Instead of continuing to wage war in peace, France would secure a lasting settlement with Germany by creating a wider European framework to subsume national tensions. The European Coal and Steel Community set up a supranational “high authority”—forerunner of the European Commission, though based in Luxembourg rather than Brussels—to oversee a common market in these crucial strategic industries. The blueprint of uniting Europe through what Schuman called “concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity” was inspired by Jean Monnet, the head of French economic planning and patron saint of post-war European integration. It became reality a year later when six states—France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux trio of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg—signed the Treaty of Paris. Just six years later the same six countries were to found the wider Common Market through the Rome treaty.

Today, the Schuman Declaration holds a sobering lesson for May—as it did for previous prime ministers. It marked the moment when France turned away from Britain to embrace Germany in a powerful partnership later enshrined in the Elysée treaty of 1963 that became the engine of European integration. Tellingly, Schuman consulted West Germany about his proposal but did not sound out Britain. Prefiguring what is now happening, Britain rejected participation and eventually negotiated an association agreement. Yet staying on the sidelines was not in the national interest as Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan realised when he decided to apply for membership of the Common Market as early as 1961—an application vetoed by French president Charles de Gaulle in 1963. For all May’s puff about “global Britain” so much of the UK’s post-war destiny has been determined by Europe.

There is also a lesson for Macron. The Franco-German partnership worked for much of the post-war period because Germany was prepared to play political second fiddle despite the greater strength of its economy. But since German unification in 1990, and especially since the euro crisis of 2010-12, the route-map of power has led to Berlin rather than Paris. French political influence has waned owing to a poorly performing economy and straitened public finances. By contrast a robust economy and public finances have underwritten greater German political sway. Macron urges further integration within the euro area of 19 countries sharing the common currency. But the new president’s ability to reassert a leading French role in Europe will depend upon whether he can push through national reforms especially to the labour market to make the economy thrive again. That remains far from certain as he inherits a bitterly divided country, not least in its attitude to Germany.