This paper focuses on Belgium's attitude to the Schuman Plan announced on May 9, 1950 which led to the establishment of the ECSC in 1952; the ECSC was a great step toward Western European integration. According to my research, based on primary sources in Belgium and the EC commission, Belgium had difficult problems concerning this project although most previous studies have not mentioned them. The Schuman Plan gave a great shock to Belgium since it enforced a radical change in the Belgian economic structure and economic policy as well. This study also deals with the main economic problems before the Schuman Plan. In the economic reconstructing process after World War I, Belgium had prosperity without pfennings and nationalizations that the most Western European countries had experienced. But after the 1940's as someone was afraid, the Belgian economy was weakened. Particularly, the Belgian coal industry became less competitive in the world while its steel industry was one of the greatest steel exporters. The Schuman Plan negotiation in Paris was affected mainly by economic problems, and leading Belgian officials formed a delegation which included important industrialists and unionists. Business organizations were against the ECSC because it would cause a crisis in coal industry and the steel industry was afraid of anti-cartel and anti-concentration clauses in the ECSC treaty. Belgium, which traditionally had liberal trends, hesitated about the "dirisisme". Despite business organizations' anti-ECSC movements, political interests, including Belgian government and trade unions, welcomed the ECSC. The Congress ratified it by a great majority in 1952. The political side chose it in order to solve economic problems since it thought the ECSC would provide the rationalization and modernization Belgian economy by powerful official control. Because Western European countries faced the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, after World War II, they decided to combine their economic power against them. Consequently, the ECSC introduced official intervention in private economic activities, which had particularly important meanings to Belgium.

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The drought which attacked Germany in the first half in 1934 grew more intense as summer came near. The drought hit all the farm products, but particularly the damage of raw fodder and grain was huge. Therefore, the Nazi agricultural leaders held a serious anxiety about the stable supply of grain of bread-making quality in the grain year 1934/35, so in July 14 of 1934 they introduced the grain provision measures as emergency measures so as to restrict the consumption for feed of grain of bread-making quality, particularly rye with twofold uses. Its operation injured the close linkages of production in the livestock farmer's management and accelerated the shortage of concentrated feed further. This meant a loss of the private initative of livestock farmer. From the autumn to the outset in 1935 the supply of feed grain extremely dropped and the excessive speculation appeared. Embodying the antipathy of the peasantry, also the grain provision measures came to deadlock. Meanwhile the bottleneck of feed supply became cumulatively aggravated and consequently the unusual contraction of animal husbandry was brought out by the massive and indiscriminate slaughter of livestock. This was no other than the crisis of the peasantry. This situation was critical. Because it was necessary to mobilize them for realizing the national security of food. The Nazi agricultural leaders did not design to withdraw the grain provision measures, but they must put it into operation whose contents should guarantee the peasantry the private initiative and enable them to recover the close linkages of production. It was intended that denying the unilateral nature of the provision measures in the previous year, they preserved the basic framework of the system and made its application flexible, which implied the concession towards the peasantry. Thus, the systematization of feed policy was needed so as to adjust the relation between demand and supply. Taking the above into account, this paper examines the institutional changes in the second grain provision measures and the transformation of feed policy which inevitably resulted from it.

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