ABSTRACT
The French government claimed it was necessary to look beyond the sovereign state and old style treaties of defensive alliance and instead consider the pooling of key industries under the authority of a new supra-national institution. With Schuman’s dramatic announcement a new idea was thrust into the centre of western politics and diplomacy. The Schuman Plan was designed to rescue French policy towards Germany from further setbacks and humiliations. Its origin lay in the French realisation of the collapse of their efforts either to prevent or successfully to delay the recovery of Germany. For the French the vital diplomatic element in the plan was that Germany should accept her offer of a new partnership and would, as a consequence of her participation in the creation and operation of the new high authority, be released from the remaining controls of the high commission.
