Issues and Solutions

The European Community has its roots in the years following the end of the Second World War at a time when there was an urgent need to find the means of replacing international conflict with co-operation. Six of Europe’s states signed the Treaty of Paris in 1951 establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the same six, these being France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and the Federal German Republic, went on six years later to sign the Treaty of Rome. This they did in order to facilitate an extension of that economic co-operation which it was believed would be more mutually beneficial than had been the nationalism of the recent past. They also looked forward ultimately to achieving that unity of the continent which had been, in the words of the Schuman Declaration, ‘always prescribed by geography, always prevented by history’. Through the progressive convergence or fusion of their interests they aimed to move forward from the national to the supranational conduct of their affairs.