Happy #EuropeDay everyone - though this year is the 70th anniversary, most people have never been told what Europe Day is or what it remembers
To remedy that, here is a thread all about Robert Schuman and the declaration of 9th May 1950 /1
To remedy that, here is a thread all about Robert Schuman and the declaration of 9th May 1950 /1
First off, who was Robert Schuman? Well as a founding father of the European Union, you would have struggled to write a more apt background. /2 
He was born in Luxembourg in 1886. His mother was from the area and his father was from Lorraine, born French but taking German citizenship after the transfer of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871. /3
Schuman was notably academic. From the age of 18, he spent 6 years studying law, economics, political philosophy, theology at universities in Berlin, Munich, Bonn and Strasbourg. He finally settled on a law degree and became a practicing lawyer. /4
When the First World War broke out he was exempt from being conscripted into the German army on health grounds and served in the local administration. /5
At the end of the First World War, Alsace-Lorraine was once again French and Schuman took up French citizenship in 1919. Schuman was elected an MP that same year and used his knowledge as a lawyer to reintegrate the newly French territory into the French legal system. /6
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Schuman was brought into the government, using his knowledge of Germany to manage refugees. Once Petain took over (leading to the surrender to the Nazis), Schuman quit the government. /7
In September 1940, he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo for acts of resistance but was saved by his background - a German lawyer intervened to prevent him being sent to Dachau. /8
Nonetheless, the Nazis were still after him and once he had escaped his captors, he went into hiding in the 'free' part of France. With a 100,000 Reichsmark bounty for his capture, he chose to stay in France with the resistance rather than join De Gaulle in London. /9
Initially after the war, he was blocked from public life due to having been, even briefly, associated with the Vichy regime. Schuman secured an intervention from De Gaulle which exonerated him entirely and secured his full rights to political participation. /10
Between 1947 and 1953, Schuman served variously in the French Government as Finance Minister, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. /11
This time in the post-war government brings us to the three major institutions that Schuman helped design and promote: NATO, the Council of Europe and the European Coal and Steel Community. /12
NATO and the Council of Europe both came in 1949. For the former, Schuman was a strong Atlanticist and played a key role in France's participation in the alliance (far from obvious given De Gaulle's own scepticism). /13
The Council of Europe meanwhile was, contrary to some beliefs today, intended to be the first step towards a supranational union. Schuman himself said in 1948 that he was the CoE as a 'herald' for a European Community. /14
It is because of this aspiration that the Council of Europe has the dual structure of both intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary bodies. The Council of Europe is also the origin of the European Flag and the European Anthem (Ode to Joy), from 1955 and 1972 respectively. /15
In the end of course, the Council of Europe took on a more narrow and intergovernmental agenda focused around human rights (the European Convention on Human Rights and its Court come this organisation). /16
Instead, it was the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community which really kicked off the European project as we know it today. And this is what finally brings us to Europe Day. /17
9th May, 1950. With the Council of Europe and NATO already underway, Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister, gave a speech calling for the countries of Europe to merge the production of coal and steel under a single, European control. /18
This system, Schuman explained, would make war between the members 'not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible'. The countries would bind themselves to the decisions of a European authority and treat all as one. /19
From here, the economic and political ties would deepen and 'lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace'. /20
Here is a short extract of the original speech, with the famous line: 'Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.' /21
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0…
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0…
In contrast to the Council of Europe, the ECSC had a much smaller membership to start - just 6 countries and tackling just a small degree of integration. /22
Nonetheless it represented the full realisation of the Schuman Declaration of 9th May: the goal of permanent peace in Europe, the creation of a European federation to maintain unity and prosperity and the steady but definitive steps that are taken to turn dreams into reality. /23
Today, 70 years on from the Schuman Declaration, we have the European Union, we have the Single Market, we have the euro, we have a single trade policy and we have elements of coordination in foreign and defence policy /24
In some respects, the world today looks even more like the world Schuman imagined in 1950, with Europe much more at risk of being caught between American ambivalence to the West and a rising alternative power system to the East. /25
And we are faced with new challenges too, some which Schuman could have imagined (pandemics), others which would be less familiar (digitalisation). The Europe we have been left today was built for us by previous generations, working over decades to further integrate and unite /26
70 years on, the question left for us is this: beyond the grand words and big speeches, what will our 'concrete achievements' be, what will we leave to those after? Europe Day is the chance to remind ourselves of the aspiration to build a new Europe, whole and free /end
