ECONOMICS: Coal-Steel Pool

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This week the Schuman Plan will be embodied in a draft treaty. Europe's most important postwar act of statesmanship —after the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty—will be ready for initialing by technical experts of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands.

It had taken Europe seven months to reach this notable stage in its quest for unity. At a cabinet meeting in May 1950, France's able Robert Schuman had drawn from his briefcase the dramatic proposal to integrate French and German coal mines and steel mills. More, he said, was at stake than an economic rationalization. His plan would dispel the war-breeding rivalry over the Ruhr's heavy industries, would lay a base for Continental cooperation ("The rallying of European nations requires that the secular opposition of France and Germany be eliminated"). Though the plan bore Schuman's name, it had been worked out mainly by astute Jean Monnet, France's commissioner for economic planning.

Britain had stood aloof from the negotiations that followed, though her attitude now seemed less hostile. France and Germany had done most of the parleying. "Whenever they agreed on a point," explained one planner, "the other nations would follow suit." Some German officials yearned for the return of profitable cartels and combines again. U.S. pressure and the Bonn government stifled their longings.

Ninety-Four Pages. Last week, with Monnet still presiding over the blueprint, the six nations' experts whipped the historic document into shape at their Paris headquarters in the Rue Martignac behind the Chamber of Deputies. The building was as busy as a beehive. At the ground floor entrance, motorcycle cops were ready to rush urgent messages all over Paris. Upstairs, in his large, sober office, Monnet was in almost permanent conference with the delegation chiefs. Argument and counterargument had been sifted down into 94 blue-bound pages of agreement. Highlights:

¶ The six West European nations, representing a Continental market of 155 million customers, will pool their coal & steel resources. Last year they produced 214 million tons of coal, 28 million tons of steel. By 1953, after modernizations have been made, they hope to have raised coal output to 220 million tons, steel to 38 million tons.

¶ Within this vast single market, customs duties for coal & steel will be abolished. So will differential freight charges (i.e., cheaper rates for export over domestic markets). Inefficient mines and mills will be closed. This will apply particularly to Belgium, where a protective tariff has kept alive a number of sub-par enterprises. Within five years Belgian coal production will decline from 28 million to 23 million tons; owners of doomed mines will be compensated from an "equalization fund" contributed mainly by France and Germany; and the Belgian coal price, now 55% higher than the German, will fall to the single market level.