In fact the idea originally belonged to Jean Monnet, who was the first to suggest such a community. However it was Robert Schuman, the man of power, who would set it in motion. When he drafted the confidential memo that would lead up to the Schuman declaration, in late April 1950, Jean Monnet was Commissioner-General of the French National Planning Board. After playing his part in the Allied victory, he was struck by the limits of different nations to get post-war Europe back on its feet and the urgent need to rebuild the bridges between Germany and the other Western European countries. For Monnet, it was up to France to make the first move.

And so he turned to his friend Robert Schuman in the hope of definitively preventing the possibility of another war. Appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1947, Schuman was both an ideal and a risky choice: he was born German, in 1886, originating from the then annexed region of Lorraine and the very idea of a Franco-German rapprochement was still practically unthinkable. The diplomatic volte face that they would manage to persuade France to take would cause a massive stir and earn them the nickname of the "Fathers of Europe".

The Schuman declaration was a mixture of daring and realism: it was not about building Europe "all at once, or according to a single plan" but "through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity", by pooling the coal and steel resources of a community that reunited the victors and the vanquished. Realism and solidarity, two driving forces which are just as powerful sixty years on.