The seeds of a European risk society: Marcinelle and the European Coal and Steel Community

Abstract

ABSTRACT The disaster in the Bois du Cazier mine in Marcinelle, Belgium was one of the biggest mining accidents in post-Second World War Western European history. The death toll was large: 262 miners died, of whom 136 were Italian. This article studies the transnational impact of that event by combining theoretical frameworks from both risk studies and European integration literature, with a specific focus on the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). After the catastrophe, numerous actors shifted the question of blame from an individual and national level to the European level. Mining risks were discussed as a structural and European issue. Furthermore, the ECSC saw the disaster as an opportunity for more European integration in new domains, most notably social policy. An intergovernmental conference in 1957 placed new policy areas, such as the harmonization of technical standards, emergency management, working conditions, wages and arrangements for foreign labourers on the political agenda. The conference and the body that was founded after it – the Mines Safety Commission – are often portrayed as failures because they did not manage to complete this ambitious social agenda. Still, the Marcinelle accident had a long-lasting impact on the way in which risks and disasters were managed on the European level. Some measures were deemed more ‘technical’, but played a social role as well. The implemented and established institutions and practices within the High Authority remained influential in the decades to come. On a more theoretical level, the case of Marcinelle illustrates the importance of combining risk and European integration frameworks. By studying Marcinelle from a risk management perspective, it is possible to transcend the current historiographic discussions, which seem stuck in a normative quarrel about responsibilities and blame.