Treaty of Paris (1951)
Six states sign the treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗Eight ministers signed for six countries: Belgium and the Netherlands each required two signatures.
18 April 1951 at the Quai d’Orsay
At the Quai d'Orsay in Paris on 18 April 1951, representatives of Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community.
Eight men signed for the six states: Konrad Adenauer; Paul van Zeeland and Joseph Meurice; Robert Schuman; Carlo Sforza; Joseph Bech; and Dirk Stikker and Johannes van den Brink.
The preamble committed the six governments to merge essential interests, expand basic production, and lay foundations for institutions directing a shared destiny.
Signed is not adopted, and not in force
The listing says the treaty was adopted that day. What is documented is signature — the signatories' parliaments still had to ratify, and the treaty entered into force only on 23 July 1952.
No Community institutions began operating on 18 April. The common market and the High Authority followed entry into force the next year.
The treaty was written to expire: its fifty-year clock started in July 1952, and it ran out on 23 July 2002.
What the joint declaration said
The ministers issued a same-day joint declaration describing the planned ECSC as the first supranational institution and the real foundation of an organized Europe, open to other European countries. It attributed 160 million Europeans to the community it described.
The declaration is often quoted as saying the treaty had given birth to Europe. Its surviving wording says instead that the signatories were laying the real foundations of an organized Europe.
Calling the 1951 body democratic in the modern sense also overreaches: its Common Assembly was composed of members selected by national parliaments, and direct European elections did not begin until 1979.
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