European Coal and Steel Community

In May 1950 French foreign minister Robert Schuman proposed the establishment of a common market for coal and steel for those countries willing to delegate control of these sectors of their economies to an independent authority.

By 1954 the agency had removed nearly all barriers to trade between its members in coal, coke, steel, pig iron, and scrap iron. As a consequence, trade in these commodities rose dramatically in the 1950s. A set of common rules was established to control cartels and to regulate mergers. The central institution, the High Authority, fixed prices and set production limits or quotas and was authorized to impose fines on business firms that infringed treaty rules.

From the 1960s one of the ECSC's main tasks was to supervise its members' reduction of their excess production of coal as that mineral was replaced by petroleum as an industrial fuel. This involved the closing of inefficient or uneconomic coal mines in member countries. Similarly, in the 1970s the ECSC began to supervise the elimination of its members' excess steelmaking capacity when low-cost steel from Japan and other countries put western European steelmakers at a competitive disadvantage.

The Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) also known by the name Euratom

'Sapere aude'