On 2 July 1980, Étienne Hirsch, former Commissioner-General of the French National Planning Board and former President of Euratom, explains to French historian Antoine Marès why the secrecy deliberately maintained around the preparations for the Schuman Plan was an essential condition for its success.
A close colleague of the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, Robert Mischlich is entrusted with the secret mission of personally announcing the French initiative to pool European coal and steel to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer on the morning of 9 May 1950.
Jean Monnet (left), Robert Schuman (middle) and Jacques de Bourbon-Busset (right), Deputy Head of Robert Schuman’s Private Office, at the opening session of the intergovernmental negotiations for the implementation of the Schuman Plan, held on 20 June 1950 in Paris.
On 18 April 1951, in Paris, the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Italy and the Netherlands sign the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). From left to right: Étienne Hirsch, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Pierre Uri.
On 30 April 1953, the eve of the opening of the European common market in steel, Jean Monnet, President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), activates the first casting of European steel in the Belval steelworks in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
In December 1957, in reaction to the publication of the report by the Three Wise Men focusing on the problems surrounding Euratom, the International Federation of Self-Generating Industrial Users of Electricity (FIPACE) reflects on present and future European policies.
