Schuman Declaration

6 p.m. in the Salon de l'Horloge

Late on the morning of 9 May 1950, after a heated discussion, the French cabinet approved a secret proposal championed by Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and developed by Jean Monnet's team.

At 6 p.m. Schuman presented the declaration in the Salon de l'Horloge at the Quai d'Orsay. More than 200 journalists had been invited, but only a small number actually attended.

No photographer, radio crew or television crew recorded the event. Schuman recreated the reading later, which is why the familiar film of it is not a record of the press conference.

One sector, not a continent

The French government proposed placing the whole of French and West German coal-and-steel production under a common High Authority, in an organization open to other European countries.

The declaration said that pooling industries central to armaments would make war between France and Germany not only unthinkable but materially impossible, and called this a first concrete step toward a European federation.

Sent out the same day

France formally transmitted the plan that day to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer — informed only shortly before the announcement — and to the governments of Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The declaration proposed a community rather than creating one. Reactions were mixed and the Benelux responses initially cautious; formal negotiations among France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries opened in Paris on 20 June 1950.