This book argues that the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 solved the historic French-German conflict over control of the coal deposits of the Ruhr valley. The product of a political bargain among the United States, France and Germany, the Treaty of Paris introduced radical new rules into the European order. For the first time in European history, cartels and powerful anticompetitive concentrations of economic power were banned.
The volume ties the problem of ensuring secure access to Ruhr coal to the larger security dilemma that long haunted French-German relations. It argues that, in effect, wars and cartels were alternative solutions to the same underlying dilemma in the period from the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries, which featured three wars and two armed occupations involving France and Germany. It discusses the importance of the economic complementarity between coal and ore in relation to the economic and security relations between France and Germany. Above all, it highlights the role played by the novel competition law regime in permanently ending the old cycle of wars and cartels that had cursed Europe through the end of World War II.
Beyond Wars and Cartels will be invaluable to those interested in postwar European history seen from a new angle as well as specialists in antitrust and competition law who compare US and American law, historians and political scientists.