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The Schuman Plan—A Preliminary Prediction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

William N. Parker
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Extract

When M. Schuman first presented his celebrated Plan over two years ago, American views, official and public, were divided between an easy cynicism and a careless rapture. Optimism was stirred by the promise of a unity of European peoples, achieving strength, peace and prosperity through their mutual interests in producing coal and steel. Cynicism amused itself with a vision of a new bureaucracy, exercising new controls through the monster international cartel hidden beneath M. Schuman's diplomatic dress. All groups of opinion, materialistic and democratic in outlook, would have agreed that the Plan, however conceived and dedicated, could not long endure unless it touched the popular heart through raising the standard of living. Here, as elsewhere, Americans looked for Europe's salvation in the joy, excitement, strength and sense of human kinship that is supposed to come from successfully executed achievements in engineering.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , August 1952 , pp. 381 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1952

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References

1 Can the Schumon Plan contribute to the final solution of the Saar problem? Would France's hold on the Saar's coal be relaxed if she were assured indefinitely of no discrimination in coal deliveries from either the Saar or the Ruhr? Would the Saar steel plants be permitted to escape from her control if she saw them grouped, with the Ruhr plants and her own, under a single High Authority? The answer is probably “no”. The mines are profitable, and the Schuman Plan will not destroy their profitability. Control over the Saar steel mills by France of French steel interests would reduce the danger of their competition, no matter what the Schuman Plan could do. In any case, the Saar struggle is not truly economic, and even if the Schuman Plan weakened the economic motives, the political ones would retion main. A solution in the Saar that kept it politically separate from Germany would not be obviated in France's eyes by the Schuman Plan, but would remain a necessary additional security requirement. It would be interesting to see the reaction to a proposal that the mines be turned over to the Schuman Plan High Author ity, to be operated by it, the profits to be used for investment purposes where needed.

2 Section 12 of the Convention providing for the dissolution of monopolistic organizations provides for a study of the problems arising and the steps needed: “On the basis of these studies … the High Authority shall establish the procedures or organizations appropriate to the solution of these problems. … The duration of such procedures or organizations shall not be limited to the (5-year) transition period.”

3 One European veteran of international coal negotiations is said to have expressed himself to the American authorities in charge of decarttellization as follows: “Very well. You must abolish the Coal Syndicate. You have your programs and policies to carry out, we know. But if you must abolish it, then I ask of you only this: that you abolish it just as little as possible.”

4 For locations of mines and centers of steel production, see United Nations, Economic Commission for Europe, European Steel Trends (Geneva, 1950)Google Scholar.

5 British, Polish (and now United States) coal also have a continental market.