2.  Paul-Henri Spaak was born on 25 January 1899 in Schaerbeek, Belgium, to
a distinguished Belgian family. His grandfather, Paul Janson was an
important member of the Liberal Party. His mother, Marie Janson was a
socialist, and the first woman to enter the Belgium senate, and his
father, Paul Spaak was a poet and playwright. Another noted members of
his family included Paul Henri's daughter, Antoinette Spaak, the first
Belgian woman to lead a political party, his uncle Paul-Emile Janson who
served as Prime Minister of Belgium from 1937 to 1938 and his
niece, Catherine Spaak a movie star.
 During World War I, Spaak attempted to join the Belgian Army, but was
captured by the Germans, and spent the next two years in a German
prison camp. At the end of the war, Spaak was released from captivity and
entered the Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he studied law. During the
same period, Spaak was also a tennis star, and played for the Belgian
team in the 1922 Davis Cup.
 After receiving his law degree, Spaak practiced law in Brussels, where he
"excelled in defending Communists charged with conspiring against the
security of the realm", including Fernando de Rosa, an Italian student who
attempted to kill Crown Prince Umberto of Italy during a state visit by the
prince to Brussels.

3.  Spaak became a staunch supporter of regional co-operation and
collective security after 1944. While still in exile in London, he
promoted the creation of a customs union uniting Belgium,
the Netherlands and Luxembourg (see Benelux). In August 1949,
he was elected President of the first session of the Consultative
Assembly of the Council of Europe. From 1952 to 1953, he
presided the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel
Community.
 In 1955, the Messina Conference of European leaders appointed
him as chairman of a preparatory committee (Spaak Committee)
charged with the preparation of a report on the creation of a
common European market. The so-called "Spaak Report" formed
the cornerstone of the Intergovernmental Conference on the
Common Market and Euratom at Val Duchesse in 1956 and led to
the signature, on 25 March 1957, of the Treaties of
Rome establishing a European Economic Community and
the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Paul-Henri
Spaak signed the treaty for Belgium, together with Jean Charles
Snoy et d'Oppuers. His role in the creation of the EEC earned
Spaak a place among the Founding fathers of the European Union.

4.  When in 1962 France's President de Gaulle
attempted to block both British entry to the
European Communities and undermine
their supranational foundation with the Fouchet
Plan, Spaak working with Joseph Luns of the
Netherlands rebuffed the idea. He was a staunch
defender of the independence of the European
Commission. "Europe of tomorrow must be
a supranational Europe," he declared. In honour
of his work for Europe, the first building of
the European Parliament in Brussels was named
after him.

5.  He became a member of the Socialist Belgian Labour Party in 1920. He
was elected deputy in 1932.
 In 1935 he entered the cabinet of Paul Van Zeeland as Minister of
Transport. In February 1936 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, serving
first under Zeeland and then under his uncle, Paul-Émile Janson. From May
1938 to February 1939 he was Prime Minister for the first time. In 1938,
he allowed Herman Van Breda to smuggle the legacy of Edmund
Husserl out of Nazi Germany to Belgium through the Belgian Embassy in
Berlin.
 He was Foreign Minister again from September 1939 until August 1949
under the subsequent Prime Ministers Hubert Pierlot, Achille Van
Acker and Camille Huysmans. During this time he twice was appointed
Prime Minister as well, first from 13 to 31 March 1946 – the shortest
government in Belgian history, and again from March 1947 to August
1949. During his last government, two important pieces of housing
legislation were enacted. The De Taeye Act of 1948 organised fiscal
rebates, credit facilities, and premiums for social dwellings built either on
private or public initiative, while the Brunfaut Act of 1949 established a
central budgeting organisation for governmental social housing policy,
shifted the financial burden of infrastructural works to the state, and
organised the financing of the two National Housing Societies.

6.  He again was foreign minister from April 1954 to
June 1958 in the cabinet of Achille Van Acker and
from April 1961 to March 1966 in the cabinets
of Théo Lefèvre and Pierre Harmel.
 Spaak was an advocate of Belgium's
"independence policy" before World War II.
During the German invasion in May 1940, he fled
to France and tried to return during the summer
but was prevented by the Germans, even though
he was Foreign Minister at the time. Hence,
against his wishes he settled in Britain.

7.  Spaak gained international prominence in 1945, when he was
elected chairman of the first session of the General Assembly of
the United Nations. During the third session of the UN General
Assembly in Paris, Spaak apostrophized the delegation of the
Soviet Union with the famous words: "Messieurs, nous avons peur
de vous" (Sirs, we are afraid of you).
 In 1956, he was chosen by the Council of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation to succeed Lord Ismay as Secretary General.
He held this office from 1957 until 1961, when he was succeeded
by Dirk Stikker. Spaak was also instrumental in the choice of
Brussels as the new seat of the Alliance's HQ in 1966.
 This was also the year of his last European campaign, when he
played an important conciliatory role in resolving the "empty chair
crisis" by helping to bring France back into the European fold. In
1957 he received the Karlspreis (engl.: Charlemagne Award) an
Award by the German city of Aachen to people who contributed to
the European idea and European peace.
 On 21 February 1961, Spaak was presented with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom by US President John Kennedy.

8.  He and his wife Marguerite Malevez had two daughters—
Antoinette Spaak led the Democratic Front of Francophones—and
a son, the diplomat Fernand Spaak. After her death in August
1964, he married Simone Dear in April 1965. His brother was the
screenwriter Charles Spaak. His niece was the actress Catherine
Spaak one of his grandsons is the artist Anthony Palliser. During
the 1940s, during his time in New York with the United Nations,
he also had an affair with the American fashion designer Pauline
Fairfax Potter (1908–1976).
 Spaak has left such a legacy behind, that he was the main motive
for one of the most recent and famous gold commemorative coin:
the Belgian 3 pioneers of the European unification
commemorative coin, minted in 2002. The obverse side shows a
portrait with the names Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak
and Konrad Adenauer.
 In the election for De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian) Spaak
ended on the 40th place in the Flemish version and on the 11th
place in the Walloon version.

9.  The Paul-Henri Spaak Foundation was created one year
after the death of this distinguished Belgian statesman in
order to continue his work in the field of the European
integration and Atlantic relations.
 To this end, the Foundation organises conferences and
seminars, which become in recurrently subjects of its
publications.
 The Foundation possesses a major part of Paul-Henri
Spaak's archives. An important decision granted the
possibility to the public to consult the archives request
copies of the materials.
 Formal requests could be launched via the search engine.
For more precise and detailed requests the enclosed
application form could be used.