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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Mending a broken world: coal and steel diplomacy between the wars
- 2 The greater and lesser wars
- 3 From Morgenthau Plan to Schuman Plan: the Allies and the Ruhr, 1944–1950
- 4 Neither restoration nor reform: the dark ages of German heavy industry
- 5 The end of the war against Germany: the coal–steel pool as treaty settlement
- 6 The success of a failure: the European Coal and Steel Community in action, 1952–1955
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The success of a failure: the European Coal and Steel Community in action, 1952–1955
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Mending a broken world: coal and steel diplomacy between the wars
- 2 The greater and lesser wars
- 3 From Morgenthau Plan to Schuman Plan: the Allies and the Ruhr, 1944–1950
- 4 Neither restoration nor reform: the dark ages of German heavy industry
- 5 The end of the war against Germany: the coal–steel pool as treaty settlement
- 6 The success of a failure: the European Coal and Steel Community in action, 1952–1955
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) made good only one promise, the most important one: It advanced the process of integration. This success grew out of failure. Little remained of Monnet's ambitious plans when he decided to step down as president of the High Authority in November 1954. Decartelization had given way to reconcentration. The High Authority, designed as suggested by its exalted and forbidding title to convey orders from above for execution from below, was beset by paralysis. The common markets created to discipline heavy industry had become its common property. Yet the disappointments of the ECSC did not result in a reversion to the nationalist-protectionist order of the 1930s. The “relaunching of Europe” that began after the French Senate's rejection of the European Defense Community treaty in August 1954 aimed at something far more ambitious than the common administration of a single sector of West European industry; the statesmen of The Six now sought “complete integration” (Vollintegration) – the eventual creation of a single communitywide environment for economic activity. This was to extend to the harmonization and coordination of tax structures, freight rates, labor practices, product standards, and administrative procedures of all sorts. No one, however, expected to “build Europe” overnight. A council representing the interests of the national governments rather than a powerful executive making policy on their behalf was to provide the institutional mechanism of integration; it was meant to operate not by schedules and bylaws but opportunistically, advancing the process whenever conditions were ripe. The Treaty of Rome contained no plan or program but merely enshrined a commitment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 1945–1955The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community, pp. 299 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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