Greetings and Happy Europe Day!

On this day in Paris in 1950, a visionary European laid the first plans for what was eventually to become today's EU. With his declaration to international media, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman sketched the outlines of an initiative to consolidate the coal and steel industries of Europe, binding nations - and their principal war-making industries - so closely together that renewed war would be unthinkable.

Fifty-six years later, the EU stands as living proof of the wisdom and foresight of Schuman and Jean Monnet, the French businessman and diplomat who inspired (and helped draft) the Schuman Declaration and ultimately became the first President of the European Coal and Steel Community. The last half-century has been one of unprecedented peace and prosperity in Europe, and the unifying force of the EU has played a major role in making that happen.

Most Americans know the EU as a trade bloc, a group of U.S. allies, an antitrust regulator, the keeper of a common currency, the reason European travel today is smoother and requires fewer passport stamps. The EU is all that and more, but its origins are in something much larger and, frankly, more important: the need to prevent war on the European continent. Today, May 9, Europeans pause to remember Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet and the beginning of the "European Project."

Click here to read a message on Schuman Day from European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner and for information on activities surrounding the observance of May 9 in the United States.


Ambassador John Bruton

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