USS Kearsarge

The Conférence of Messine is an Interministerial meeting of the Six Member States of the ECSC which was held with Messine, on the invitation of Gaetano Martino (at his place), in order to solve the problems caused by the failure of CED. It is of this conference that the European Economic community was going to be born two years later and starts again it European integration.

The Foreign Ministers of the Six meet in Messine 1st with the June 3rd 1955. They are Jan Willem Beyen (Netherlands), Gaetano Martino (Italy), Joseph Bech (Luxembourg), Antoine Pinay (France), Walter Hallstein (FRG) and Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium).

If the first two days of the Conference do not lead to nothing conclusive, in the night from June 2nd to 3rd, a last meeting arrives, with the snatch, to work out a text, “the Resolution of Messine”, which constitutes a true statement of principles testifying to the agreement to which the six Member States arrived. Like Paul-Henri Spaak in his memories writes it: “ Our discussions were long and serious. It took the last day, to work all during the night to put agreement to us on the final communique the sun rose on the top of the Etna, when we withdrew ourselves, tired but happy. Great decisions had been made ”.

This official statement starts as follows: “ the governments at the proper time believe to reach a new stage in the way of European construction. They think that this one must be realized initially in the economic domain. They estimate that it is necessary to continue the establishment of Europe linked by the development of common institutions, the progressive fusion of the nation's economies, the creation of a Common Market and the progressive harmonization of their industrial relations policy ”.

The conference leads to the creation of the Spaak Committee in charge of the preliminary works to a new treaty (which will be two: the treated futures of Rome). This Committee submits an in April 1956 report in order to prepare an intergovernmental conference with the castle of Valley Duchess in summer 1956.

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