Why did France and Germany agree to share their coal and steel in 1950?
Five years after the war, a French minister proposed putting the raw materials of war under a shared authority. It was the first brick of the European Union.
▶ Start the storyFrance and Germany shared their coal and steel because the French government wanted to make another war between them impossible, not just unlikely. On 9 May 1950, the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, proposed putting French and West German coal and steel production under a single authority. The date is still celebrated in the EU as Europe Day.
Why coal and steel? Because those two raw materials were the basis of each country's industry, including its war industry, and of its power. Schuman said that the solidarity created by sharing production would make a war between France and Germany "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible." The original idea was conceived by Jean Monnet, a senior French civil servant, and announced by Schuman.
Step 1: Pool coal and steel
Put French and West German production under one authority
Step 2: Create common interests
Each country now depends on the other
Step 3: War becomes materially impossible
In Schuman's words, not merely unthinkable
The plan had a second aim: stopping coal and steel firms from acting as that could restrict supply in national markets. The German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, and the governments of the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Luxembourg answered positively. On 18 April 1951 the six countries signed the Treaty of Paris, creating the European Coal and Steel Community. It is described as Europe's first community, and it paved the way for the European Economic Community and, later, the European Union.
Not everyone was convinced. In France, Charles de Gaulle called it a false pooling and an unsatisfactory piecemeal approach to European unity. In Germany, the Social Democratic leader Kurt Schumacher argued that a "Little Europe of the Six" would override the aim of German reunification. The plan went ahead anyway, and the for coal opened in 1953.
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Recap
The EU began as a way to make a Franco-German war impossible by sharing the raw materials of war.
💡 A trick to remember it · Two old enemies keep the raw materials of war in one shared locker, and each holds only half the key.
Surprising fact · The ECSC's four institutions became the blueprint for the Commission, Parliament, Council and Court of Justice.
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (14 claims) cites at least one of these.