Administrative agency designed to integrate the coal and steel industries of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
It originated in the plan of Robert Schuman (1950) to establish a common market for coal and steel by those countries willing to submit to an independent authority. Created in 1952, the ECSC came to include all members of the European Union . It initially removed barriers to trade in coal, coke, steel, pig iron, and scrap iron; it later supervised the reduction of its members' excess production. In 1967 its governing bodies were merged into the European Community . When the treaty expired in 2002, the ECSC was dissolved.