The acorn from which the vast forest of the European Union was to grow was planted 50 years ago when the treaty designed to integrate the coal and steel industries of France, West Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg was ratified by the six countries. This year the mature tree, known as the European Coal and Steel Community, is being chopped down and quietly shipped out of the plantation.
To the people of Europe the foundation of the ECSC, barely eight years after the end of the second World War, represented a brave phoenix rising from the ashes of destruction and desolation. It was also the practical manifestation of the vision of two Frenchmen, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet.
Schuman, a member of the National Assembly, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940; he escaped in 1942 and finished the war in the Resistance. Monnet, a former deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations, worked with the Free French administration in London, Washington and Algiers. Both men were determined that France and Germany should never to go war again. As French Foreign Minister, Schuman adopted the plan, drawn up largely by Monnet, for a new economic and political framework for Europe. The ultimate objective was a united Europe; the first step was the Coal and Steel Community.
Founding fathers
A few years after its establishment I had the opportunity, as a member of a journalistic delegation, to meet some of the founding fathers of the ECSC in Luxembourg. They were all enthusiastic about the prospects of unity. A measure of their enthusiasm was their decision to limit the duration of the founding treaty to a period of 50 years only: hence the demise of the institution this year.
At dinner one evening I was seated beside the Belgian representative on the ruling body, the High Authority, M. Albert Coppe, a former foreign minister. The six countries of the ECSC had adopted four official languages - French, German, Italian and Dutch. "Surely," I asked, " it must be very expensive having to deal with four languages with all the translations of documents and all the interpreters at meetings?"
M.Coppe gazed at me with the look of a world-weary headmaster responding to a naïve pupil.
"Expensive!" he declared. "Of course it's expensive. Very, very expensive. But it's a lot less expensive than a third world war."
Official languages
According to M. Coppe, if it had not been for an intervention by him at the negotiations to draft the treaty in Paris, there would have been only three official languages. "When it came to talking about languages," he told me, "it was quickly agreed that French, German and Italian should be on the list. The foreign minister from the Netherlands did not intervene. The Dutch, you know, have no problems about languages. But I am Flemish and I love my native tongue so I turned to my Dutch colleague and said: 'Of course my friend from the Netherlands will want Dutch on the list also.' That is how Dutch became an official language of the Community." (The European Union, into which the ECSC was subsumed in 1967, now has 11 official languages).
Ireland, with a meagre domestic interest in coal and steel, seems to have taken little notice of the establishment of the ECSC, but it was a matter of some concern and controversy in post-war Britain. The Labour government of Clement Attlee had nationalised the coal and steel industries but took an insular attitude to the first steps on the road to European integration. "The miners in Durham wouldn't like it," one of the Labour Ministers, Herbert Morrison, stated arrogantly.
The Leader of the Opposition, Sir Winston Churchill, forced a debate on the issue. Britain's absence from the treaty talks setting up the ECSC "deranges the balance of Europe," he told the Westminster parliament. Churchill said he was all for a reconciliation between France and Germany, and for receiving Germany back into the European family; "but this implies, as I have always insisted, that Britain and France should in the main act together so as to be able to deal on equal terms with Germany, which is so much stronger than France alone." During the debate a young newly elected Tory MP made a maiden speech strongly urging British participation in the treaty negotiations. His name was Edward Heath and he has remained staunchly pro-European throughout his long parliamentary career.
Labour won the vote and the Coal and Steel Community went ahead without Britain. In spite of his harsh criticism of the Labour Government's policy, Churchill made no attempt to reverse Attlee's decision not to join when he returned to power in 1951.
Trade barriers
Within two years of its foundation the ECSC had removed nearly all the barriers to trade in coal, coke, steel, pig iron and scrap iron among its member states. It fixed prices, set production quotas, regulated mergers, controlled cartels and imposed fines on firms infringing the treaty rules. Sadly in its later years the Community has been involved in closing uneconomic coalmines and eliminating excess steel-making capacity.
Ireland joined the ECSC in 1973, when it was admitted to membership of the wider union along with Britain and Denmark. We have benefited from membership. Redundant miners at Arigna and Silvermines received assistance with re-training and re-housing from the coffers of Europe's embryonic acorn.