Building the European Union

On 9 May 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman presented a plan, largely drafted by the economist and civil servant Jean Monnet, proposing that France and West Germany place their entire coal and steel production under a common High Authority, open to other European countries. The Schuman Declaration framed this pooling of two industries essential to war-making as a concrete step toward Franco-German reconciliation only five years after the end of the Second World War, arguing that solidarity in production would make war between the two nations "not merely unthinkable but materially impossible." Schuman explicitly described the plan not as an end in itself but as a first stage toward a broader federation of Europe, to be built through "concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity" rather than through a single comprehensive constitution. The declaration is conventionally treated as the founding act of European integration, and 9 May is celebrated annually in the European Union as Europe Day.