9th of May, Europe Day

It’s 9th of May, the Europe Day. On 9th May 1950 a Robert Schuman announced to the press a plan for managing coal and steel production between Germany and France.

He had looked at Europe, devastated by war, and decided that there had to be another way. But how? They could try to ban weapons, but that rarely works. The winners don’t want to give them up, and the losers tend to get bitter about not having any. So instead, Schuman thought that if the leaders of Europe could not control who had weapons, they could control what makes weapons. Steel. And what do you need to make steel? Coal. Pooling production would make any war between France and Germany impossible according to Schuman. It was this plan that initiated the process that created today’s European Union. BİLGİ’s european Institute does research on the EU since 2007.