Flag of the European Coal and Steel Community

Flag of the European Coal and Steel Community
	; ;
Vexillological symbol :	?
Aspect ratio:	2: 3
Officially accepted:	1958–1972 (original design) ; 1986–2002 (final design)

The flag of the European Coal and Steel Community was a horizontal two-tone flag with a number of stars in each stripe, representing the member states of the organization. The European Coal and Steel Community used its own flag from 1958, six years after it was founded by six states, until 2002, when the organization became part of the European Union .

description

The flag consisted of two horizontal stripes, the upper one in blue and the lower one in black. Blue stood for steel and black for coal, the two raw materials whose trade was managed by the organization. There were a number of gold, later white stars on the flag, the number of which corresponded to the member states at the time (until 1986, when the number of stars was limited to twelve). These stars were evenly divided between the two stripes, aligned close to the center of the flag (if there were an odd number of stars, the smaller part was on the top stripe).

history

The flag was first unveiled at Expo 58 in Brussels , six years after the organization was founded. The European flag was also shown publicly there.

There were six gold (yellow) stars on the first version of the flag. The number was adjusted with the accession of further countries until the community comprised twelve members in 1986. Thereafter, the number was not changed, not even when other countries joined the organization in the 1990s. This kept the flag in line with the European flag (which was used by its sister organizations) which uses twelve stars which represent perfection and unity.

The Paris Treaty provided for the end of the organizational work on July 23, 2002, with the result that the ECSC ceased to exist. On that day the flag of the ECSC outside the European Commission in Brussels was deleted by President Romano Prodi and replaced by the flag of the EU.

An original copy of the twelve-star flag is kept at the European University Institute in Florence .

Number of stars	Member States represented by added stars (until 1986)	Period
six	The "Inner Six": Belgium , France , West Germany , Italy , Luxembourg and the Netherlands	1958-31. December 1972
nine	Denmark , Ireland and the United Kingdom	January 1, 1973-31. December 1980
ten	Greece	January 1, 1981-31. December 1985
Twelve	Portugal and Spain (the number of stars was then set to twelve; the principle of one star per member was thus abandoned).	Jan. 1, 1986-23. July 2002