On June 20, 1950, representatives of six countries (Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) met in Paris to launch what became the first intergovernmental conference in the history of European integration. The outcome, after a year of difficult negotiations, was an agreement to establish the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed in Paris on April 18, 1951. Based on the Schuman Declaration of May 1950, the Paris Treaty established a High Authority of a “supranational character,” with responsibility for managing a common market for two key industrial sectors. The Coal and Steel Community was a political as much as an economic undertaking. It institutionalized a new departure in relations between France and West Germany and helped cement a postwar peace settlement in Western Europe, within the broader framework of an emerging transatlantic system.