Competition, Cartels and Their Regulation

RICHARD A. HAMBURGER

Councillor of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Authority, Luxembourg

The establishment of the common market for coal and steel was an experiment in various respects. When Robert Schuman, at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, invited the European countries in 1950 to establish this market, even the extent of it was unknown. Some months later, the governments of the six countries ( France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) had decided to participate, while all other countries refused. The regional limits of the future common market were fixed and limited to continental Europe with exclusion of the parts, dominions and colonies of the participating countries in other continents.

To start European integration with two sectors of the economy leaving all others under national control was a new and daring idea. The definition of the products, given in Annexe I of the Treaty, resulted in a rather arbitrary distinction between products which are subject to integration under the Treaty and the vast field of non-integrated products. Everybody realized at that time that this partial integration could not survive indefinitely but must be followed by further steps. The initiators of the Treaty thought and hoped that success in these two sectors would lead to similar efforts in other sectors of the European economy. Therefore, this first Treaty for the integration of coal and steel was proposed and propagated as a model Treaty for partial integration.

As a consequence of this expectation of further integration along these lines, which afterwards was not fulfilled, the Treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community defines in one of the fundamental articles the general criteria of a common market, though they are put

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