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

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Elena Calandri
relaunching the process by starting out from an armaments community, although he
soon abandoned the idea lest the unpopularity of military issues sully European
federal ideas and instead selected nuclear energy as the next target for European
integration. 9
So, in the wake of the vote on 30 August, an armaments community was likely
to be among the options considered in Paris. On 10 September the secretary general
of the Centre d'études de politique étrangère, Jacques Vernant, made sure that it
would be considered by the highest authorities by sending a note to Georges Boris,
chargé de mission at Matignon and perhaps the closest adviser to the Prime Minister,
Pierre Mendès France. 10
At the same time a change of heart was taking place in quarters as far apart as
the Foreign Ministry, the High Commissariat in Germany and private enterprise.
Economic relations between French and German firms were flourishing, making
each country the other's best partner in a number of sectors. Heavy industry unions,
in particular, had developed relationships, partly through partnership in the Coal
and Steel Community, and fully independent of official connections. The official
rethink which took place in the summer of 1954 was seen to be overdue therefore.
It combined economic awareness with acknowledgement of the need for political
cooperation with Germany and mixed feelings about supranationalism. It was
when ways of escaping from the European Defence Community were being pondered
upon, in July 1954, that the Sous-direction d'Europe centrale concluded that the
answer lay in Bonn and that in Brussels Mendès France should seek an entente
with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in order to drop the most extreme parts of the
Paris Treaty and revert to a gradual, functional approach as opposed to the institutional
one, which was driving the Six to become a technocratic superstate.
After the Saar question, it singled out canalization of the Moselle, the project
for a Grand Canal d'Alsace and "Franco-German cooperation in the field of the
Paris Treaty interdictions" as concrete bases for cooperation to be developed
further.
"L'arme atomique, avions militaires, engins téléguidés: ces interdictions – he explained
in mid-July – (avaient) été dès l'origine conçues par nous comme destinées à
permettre une coopération franco-allemande en dehors du territoire de l'Allemagne.
Il n'y avait en effet aucune raison pour que l'Europe de l'Ouest soit seule à ne pas
profiter de l'apport technique et intellectuel allemand, alors que ce sont les savants
allemands qui ont permis à différents pays de réaliser des avances importantes dans
ces mêmes domaines. D'autre part, il était évident que si une telle coopération ne
pouvait s'instaurer, les interdictions seraient très rapidement remises en question par
8. G. ELGEY, Histoire de la IVe République, III. La République des tourmentes 1954-59, Tome Premier,
Paris 1992, p.205; F. SEYDOUX, Mémoires d'outre-Rhin, Paris 1975, p. 186.
9. P. GERBET, "La relance européenne jusqu'à la Conférence de Messine", in E. SERRA (ed.), Il
rilancio dell'Europa e i Trattati di Roma, Milano 1989, pp.61-92:68, quoting J. VAN HELMONT,
Options européennes 1945-1985, Bruxelles 1986, p. 56.
10. AMAE, Wormser, 23 J. Vernant to G. Boris, Note sur une solution de rechange à la C.E.D., 10
September 1954; on Boris's role, G.-H. SOUTOU, "La France, l'Allemagne et les accords de
Paris", Relations Internationales, no.52, hiver 1987, pp. 451-470:455.