ABSTRACT
The success of the negotiations for the ECSC pointed out a possible solution to the problems raised for Western Europe by the programme of trade liberalization-sectoral integration. Not that the Schuman proposals themselves were in any direct or important way a response to the trade liberalization programme. As far as the iron and steel industry was concerned it was scarcely conceivable that a business of such fundamental industrial and strategic importance should have been swept into that programme. In the event, however, the ECSC provided a timely barrier against the issue ever being raised. In many other sectors the pursuit of trade liberalization was running into real difficulties by the end of 1950, difficulties which were made only more painful by the agreement on the EPU.
