European Coal and Steel Community

European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), former transnational European authority controlling Europe's coal and steel industries. Formally established by the Treaty of Paris, signed on April 18, 1951, the ECSC came into being on August 10, 1952. Its signatories were Belgium, France, West Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands. Its first president was Jean Monnet, whose proposals that the West German and French coal and steel industries should be placed under a single high authority which would supervise their development had been incorporated in the Schuman Plan launched in 1950. The supranational authority created by the ECSC was unique and had wide powers. It oversaw a period of great expansion in the two industries, which were then considered “basic industries”. Internal trade within the community after the abolition of customs barriers rose by more than 100 per cent within five years. Production grew too: to roughly one fifth of total world production by 1974. In 1957 the six members of the ECSC signed the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community (EEC), but it was not until July 1, 1967, that the EEC, the ECSC, and Euratom (established by a separate treaty signed in Rome in 1957) were amalgamated as the European Community (EC), which after enlargement from 6 to 12 members between 1973 and 1986 (and in 1990 with the addition of East Germany) became the European Union (EU) in 1993. The success of the ECSC coincided with growth in both the world steel and coal industries. In the mid-1970s the steel industry went into decline, and in the 1980s the coal industry faced increasing competition from imports of coal from non-EC countries such as those in eastern Europe. As a result, the issue of government subsidies for the two industries became increasingly contentious among members. The ECSC officially ceased operating in July 2002.