ABSTRACT
The organisation known since ratification of the Maastricht Treaty on November 1, 1993 as the European Union began life as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). This came into being on April 18, 1951, when Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and Luxembourg signed the Treaty of Paris and agreed to accept a common authority to regulate the production of coal and steel. They did so in response to the suggestion, made by the French Foreign Minister in a press conference on May 9, 1950, that French and German coal and steel production should be pooled in order to avoid a fourth war between the two countries. The British government declined the invitation extended to it to join. As Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister, put it at the time, ‘We are not going to join a group of countries in which we have just saved four of them from the other two’.
