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 now-famous declaration, 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-seven 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 later became the first President of the European Coal and Steel Community, which would evolve to become the EU. The Treaty of Rome established the basis for European integration in 1957 and the subsequent half-century has been one of unprecedented peace, partnership, and prosperity in Europe. 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 Western allies, an antitrust regulator, the keeper of a common currency, or 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 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 the historic Schuman Declaration from May 9, 1950. And, for those in the Washington, DC metro area, please join us this Saturday for EU Embassies Open House Day, part of our Europe Day celebrations.

Ambassador John Bruton
Head of Delegation

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