On 23 April 1956, Maurice Masoin, Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of Louvain (CUL) and Secretary-General of the International Institute for Public Finance, delivers a lecture to the Charleroi section of the ‘Mars et Mercure’ industrial and military group in which he outlines the implications of nuclear energy and of the establishment by the six Member States of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) of a nuclear energy organisation, Euratom.