The year 1949 was also the year in which the treaty establishing the Council of
Europe was signed. This Council, which counts theEuropean Convention on
Human Rightsas its most famous achievement, was adopted in 1950.
The Council of Europe must be distinguished from both the Council of the European Coal
and Steel Community (ECSC), from the European Economic Community (EEC) and from
(the Councils of) the EU, all of which will be discussed later.Schuman Initiative Against this backdrop of events, which divided Europe into
an Eastern and a Western part, a 1950 initiative of the French Foreign Minister
Robert Schuman found fertile soil. Schuman proposed that:
Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High
Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other
countries of Europe.
This proposal was inspired by the desire to improve relations between France
and Germany and to prevent a new war between these two countries by combining
their coal and steel production outputs. Since coal and steel were crucial resources
for warfare, uniting the production of these two resources would make a new war
between the involved countries less likely.
To cut a long story short, the Schuman initiative led to the creation of the
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. The ECSC led to the
creation of another cooperation, this time on economic policy, in 1958. It became
the European Economic Community (EEC). The crucial difference is that while all
the other organizations allowed states to cooperate while maintaining their full
sovereignty, the ECSC, the EEC, the European Atomic Energy Community
(Euratom), and later the EU were based on the idea that the participating states
would transfer part of their sovereign powers to these new organizations. The
organizations would not merely be “intergovernmental” ones—organizations in
which states, through their governments, cooperate—but “supranational” ones or
organizations that have powers over the participating states to some extent. By
participating in these supranational organizations, the states involved took at least a
step into the direction of a European federation. Opinions within Europe were, and
still are, strongly divided about the size of that step and about the desirability, if not
necessity, of taking more steps.
Spillover In this connection, the idea of “spillover” plays an important role. In
general, spillover means that the full realization of one thing requires the realization
of some other thing.
The general idea of spillover is well illustrated by a pyramid of glasses. There is a
continuous stream of water into the glass at the top and once this glass is full the water
flows over into the glasses at the second layer, until the glasses at this layer are full and the
water flows over to the glasses on the third layer,...and so on.Functional Method When applied to the ECSC and similar organizations, spill-
over means that the realization of full cooperation in coal and steel production
212 J. Hage