Paul-Henri Spaak in the context of Belgian Labour Party

The Messina Conference of 1955 was a meeting of the six member states of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The conference assessed the progress of the ECSC and, deciding that it was working well, proposed further European integration. This initiative led to the creation in 1957 of the European Economic Community and Euratom.

The conference was held from 1 to 3 June 1955 at the Italian city of Messina, Sicily, in the City Hall building known as Palazzo Zanca (it). It was a meeting of the foreign ministers of all six member states of the ECSC, and it would lead to the creation of the European Economic Community. The delegations of the six participating countries were headed by Johan Willem Beyen (Netherlands), Gaetano Martino (Italy), Joseph Bech (Luxembourg), Antoine Pinay (France), Walter Hallstein (Germany), and Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium). Joseph Bech was chairman of the meeting.

The College of Europe (French: Collège d'Europe; Dutch: Europacollege; Polish: Kolegium Europy) is a post-graduate institute of European studies with three campuses in Bruges, Belgium; Warsaw, Poland; and Tirana, Albania.

The College of Europe in Bruges was founded in 1949 as a result of the 1948 Congress of Europe in The Hague by leading historical European figures and founding fathers of the European Union, including Salvador de Madariaga, Winston Churchill, Paul-Henri Spaak and Alcide De Gasperi, to promote "a spirit of solidarity and mutual understanding between all the nations of Western Europe and to provide elite training to individuals who will uphold these values" and "to train an elite of young executives for Europe". After the fall of communism, the College opened an additional campus in Natolin, Poland, that was donated to the institution by the Polish government in 1992. A campus in Tirana opened in 2024.

The founding fathers of the European Union are men who are considered to be major contributors to European unity and the development of what is now the European Union (EU). The number and list of the founding fathers of the EU varies depending on the source. In a publication from 2013 the EU listed 11 men.

Some sources list only a subset of the 11 men as founding fathers. The Council of Europe lists six founding fathers as builders of Europe, including the Briton Ernest Bevin. The media outlet Deutsche Welle presented a different constellation, it listed Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet and Paul-Henri Spaak as the five founding fathers of the EU. Other sources have emphasized Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, Alcide De Gasperi of Italy and Robert Schuman of France as the founding fathers from the three pioneers countries of the European unification.