number 1 - Centre d'études et de recherches européennes Robert ...

The Western European Union Armaments Pool 39
export. Labelled a "strategically exposed area" West Germany renounced the right
to build atomic, biological and chemical weapons, the so-called ABC weapons, as
well as several classes of heavy armaments. 5
Provisions on the subject of armaments formed an almost self-contained whole
within the Paris treaty. At all events, some in France saw it this way and became
convinced that an armaments community could offer a substitute for the EDC. A
leading proponent of this argument was Pierre-Olivier Lapie, an anti-cédiste socialist
deputy who, in 1953, called for reconsideration of the emotional concept of
merging national armies and launched a campaign for an armaments community as
a "formule de remplacement ou d'étape de la CED". His call fell upon authoritative
ears at the Centre d'études de politique étrangère. A "European Armaments Community
Study Group" operated there from November 1953 to June 1954 and, in
February 1954 sponsored a project of Lapie's for an interim convention. It was suggested
that, pending implementation of the Paris Treaty, the Council of Ministers
for Foreign Affairs should establish an organization to prepare joint programmes
for armaments, equipment, supplies and infrastructures. 6
At all events, outside anti-cédiste circles it ricocheted and in the Quai d'Orsay
diplomats involved in trying to reconcile German rehabilitation with France's interests
confirmed the crucial role of armaments. Although the emotional mixture of
fears and national emotion which had fuelled French opposition to Germany's
membership of NATO in 1950 had partially evaporated by 1954 the Foreign
Ministry still maintained that NATO, owing to its purpose and structure, lacked the
tools for keeping German rearmament under control. It was exactly for limiting and
controlling the quality and quantity of weapons available to German armed forces
that NATO was specially unsuited, because it had no means of governing the distribution
of foreign aid, of limiting Germany's independence in the deployment of her
potential and the manufacture of arms, no means of imposing Continent-wide standardization,
the division of labour, joint production and the enforcement of controls.
7 During the search for alternative courses of action open to the Brussels
conference a working group chaired by the Secretary General, Alexandre Parodi,
came up with a project, in the summer of 1954, for replacement of the Paris Treaty
by two agreements to establish a European armaments community and a sevenpower
defence organization, respectively. 8 Early in September, deeply shocked by
the setback in the construction of Europe, Jean Monnet himself was to consider
5. Listed in Annex 2 to article 107 of the Treaty. On the armaments provisions of the Paris Treaty see E.
FURSDON, The European Defence Community, pp.163-166; P. GERBET, La naissance du Marché
Commun, Bruxelles 1987, pp.70-71.
6. P. O. LAPIE, De Léon Blum à de Gaulle. Le caractère et le pouvoir, Paris 1971, pp.368-374; articles
on Revue des deux mondes, 1-9-1953, and Revue socialiste, Octobre 1953; on 13 October he presented
his position at the centre: see Archives du ministère des Affaires extérieures, Paris (hereafter
AMAE), Papiers Wormser, 23, P.O. Lapie, L'Europe de demain. Armées intégrées ou communauté
d'armement, and GROUPE D'éTUDES DE LA COMMUNAUTé EUROPéENNE D'ARMEMENT,
Projet de convention intérimaire de protocol, présenté per M.P.O. Lapie à la séance du lundi 22 février
1954.
7. AMAE, Wormser, 23, sous-direction d'Europe centrale, Note n. 3, 26 June 1954