way to proceed was not at the top, at national
level, but rather ‘functionally’, where collabora-
tion could be shown to benefit all concerned.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had
shown the way. During the war they had agreed to
form a customs union, which came into operation
in 1948. The Belgian statesman, Paul Henri
Spaak, was an ardent Europeanist; he had been
elected to the presidency of the Council of Europe
and was later to play an important role in the cre-
ation of the Common Market.
The Americans also sought to further West
European integration. Marshall Aid had been
offered on condition that the Europeans them-
selves should cooperate and work out a coordi-
nated plan for reconstruction. This led to the
setting up of the Organisation for European
Economic Co-operation (OEEC) in April 1948.
The carrot of US aid spurred sixteen Western
European nations (in October 1949 the Federal
Republic of Germany joined and, also in 1949,
Spain) to agree on how to share the aid. The
Council of the OEEC was composed of repre-
sentatives of the member states, but it could not
impose its decisions on individual nations. It was
not a supranational body, but its expert commit-
tees developed the practice of discussing eco-
nomic cooperation. Their most important and
difficult task was to agree on the division of
dollars, which the US was making available.
European integration policies became, as far as
their leading proponents were concerned, a ques-
tion not just of idealism but also of hard-headed
realism. For the French a comprehensive arrange-
ment with the German iron, coal and steel com-
plexes made good economic sense in safe-guarding
French heavy industry; at the same time suprana-
tional control would remove any possibility of
undetected or uncontrolled German rearmament.
French determination to secure access to the coal
mines of the Saar, without the bad blood a separa-
tion of the Saar from West Germany would cause,
was an additional incentive. The outcome of all
these considerations was the famous plan proposed
in May 1950 by the foreign minister, Robert
Schuman.
The Schuman Plan, largely Jean Monnet’s
brain-child, put forward the bold scheme of
pooling French and German production of coal,
iron and steel – it would be open to other West
European countries to join if they wished. A
crucial aspect of the Plan was the setting up of a
supranational ‘high authority’ that would make
decisions not on a national level, but in the overall
interests of the integrated industries. Adenauer
saw the advantages of the Plan and promptly
accepted it. West Germany would be treated as
an equal, and the European solution allowed rela-
tionships of trust to be re-established that would
facilitate the recovery of full sovereignty for the
Federal Republic. This was finally attained only
five years later in May 1955.
The European Coal and Steel Community
played the key role in taking its six West Euro-
pean member states (France, West Germany, Italy
and the Benelux countries) forward at last along
the road of economic and political coordination.
By this means the ‘German problem’ became
manageable, and, more than that, West European
economic cooperation made all of the participat-
ing states rapidly more prosperous. The success of
the original ECSC was due, in the first place, to
the fact that its aims were strictly limited.
As with the Monnet Plan for French mod-
ernisation, a practical start had been made in just
one crucial sector of industry; the creation from
the start of a comprehensive European political
and economic union was recognised as impossi-
ble. Second, institutions were created which
down-graded national sovereignty – an important
reason why Britain would not join – and trans-
ferred decision-making to the supranational High
Authority. Working with it were a Council of
Ministers, a Common Assembly and a Court of
Justice. Thus an embryonic European executive,
Parliament and Court were set up, which worked
with government representatives in the Council
of Ministers – but most decisions did not require
the separate consent of national governments.
Jean Monnet was the choice for the first president
of the ECSC.
The ECSC overcame an early period of diffi-
culty and haggling between rival national interests
to prove in the mid-1950s the benefit to all the
participants of having established a common mar-
ket in coal and steel. Business interests in France520 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s