the Committee of Regions. Schuman described supranational unions as a new stage in human development. It contrasted with destructive nationalisms of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that began in a glorious patriotism and ended in wars. He traced the beginning concept of supranationality back to the nineteenth century, such as the Postal Union, and the term supranational is used around the time of the First World War. Democracy, which he defined as "in the service of the people and acting in agreement with it", was a fundamental part of a supranational community. However, governments only began to hold direct elections to the European Parliament in 1979, and then not according to the treaties. A single electoral statute was specified in the treaty for Europe's first community of coal and steel in 1951. Civil society (largely non-political) was to have its own elected chamber in the Consultative Committees specific to each Community as democratically agreed, but the process was frozen (as were Europe's parliamentary elections) by Charles de Gaulle and other politicians who opposed the Community method. Today supranationalism only exists in the two European Communities inside the EU: the Economic Community (often called the European Community although it does not legally cover all State activities) and Euratom (the European Atomic Energy Community, a non-proliferation community, in which certain potentialities have been frozen or blocked). Supranational Communities provide powerful but generally unexploited and innovatory means for democratic foreign policy, by mobilising civil society to the democratically agreed goals of the Community. The first Community of Coal and Steel was agreed only for fifty years. Opposition, mainly by enterprises which had to pay a small European tax of less than 1% and government ministers in the council, led to its democratic mandate not being renewed. Its jurisprudence and heritage remains part of the European Community system. De Gaulle attempted to turn the European Commission into a political secretariat under his control in the Fouchet Plan but this move was thwarted by such democrats in the Benelux countries as Paul-Henri Spaak, Joseph Luns and Joseph Bech as well as a large wave of other pro-Europeans in all the Community countries. The supranational Community method came under attack, not only from de Gaulle but also from other nationalists and Communists. In the post-de Gaulle period, rather than holding pan-European elections under a single statute as specified in all the treaties, governments held and continue