Expertise and the Creation of a Constitutional Order for Core Europe: Transatlantic Policy Networks in the Schuman Plan Negotiations

Abstract

At the Schuman Plan conference in 1950–51, the delegations of France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries negotiated the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which laid the foundation for the ‘core Europe’ integration of the six member states. This chapter accentuates the notion of expertise in exploring the informal cooperation of transatlantic policy networks at the interstate conference. These networks of a variety of academic and other experts, civil servants and state and non-state actors crucially contributed to shaping the first supranational European institutional framework and antitrust law. The ECSC Treaty created the institutional template for European integration and the contemporary European Union (EU). Although sectoral integration through the coal and steel pool did not lead directly to horizontal integration in the form of a customs union in the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957–58, transatlantic policy networks helped to create important path dependencies for the process of European integration.1