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

The Western European Union Armaments Pool 45
WEU's most relevant assignments. On 30 September the French position was reformulated
in a "Note sur le problème de la production des armements". 24
Greeted by the foreign ministers of Belgium, Paul-Henri Spaak, and of the
Netherlands, Johann Willem Beyen, as the most difficult issue on the table, the rechristened
Armaments Pool was the topic of lively discussions and the one point which
almost split the conference. The Italian Foreign Minister, Gaetano Martino, gave it
his qualified support. But Beyen roundly condemned it as an attempt to preserve the
EDC provisions without the EDC guarantees and the necessary political and economic
environment. The Benelux ministers hinted that the proposal sought to give the
edge to French industrial interests by encouraging the concentration of industry in
Southern France and North Africa under the cloak of security reasons, that it might
foster Franco-German industrial hegemony and rendered British membership impossible.
As representatives of small countries they felt their countries' interests would
not be protected by the Agency's weak and questionable supranational character. In
addition, all the countries rejected WEU control over American military supplies. On
30 September the United States Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, declared
bluntly that Washington would not accept interference regarding where American aid
went which was "to a certain extent a reflection of American policy". 25
Chancellor Adenauer did not openly dismiss the French plan but flatly stated
that Germany would not accept any discrimination. In fact, he considered the plan
to be heavily discriminatory against his country because it denied the German contingent
its basis for armaments. It used the concept of a "strategically exposed area"
as a discriminatory device, virtually preventing any armaments industry from being
built up on German soil, while aiming to concentrate the whole of arms production
for the Brussels Pact's continental territory in France. As did his Benelux colleagues,
Adenauer criticised the Agency's inconsistent status and disproportionate
powers which did not provide the guarantees of impartiality and non-partisanship
that the EDC Treaty granted the Commissariat. While he acknowledged Mendès
France's domestic difficulties, he suspected that the French Minister could be seeking
a settlement which could serve later for a deal with the Soviet Union to Germany's
disadvantage. 26
On 29 September the Belgian delegation circulated an alternative memorandum
on armaments control. It gave NATO exclusive competence in defining the military
needs of Brussels Pact members and reduced the WEU armaments agency to a
simple control body. 27
24. PRO: FO 1086/180, N.P.C.(54) 5, Conférence des Neuf, Londres Septembre 1954. Compte rendu
sténographique Première séance plenière; the French note also in DDF, 1954 Annexes.
25. In his memoirs, Paul-Henri Spaak remembers briefly: "(La proposition française ) contenait des
dispositions compliquées au sujet du contrôle des armements. Certaines étaient plus rigoureuses
que celles incluses dans le traité sur la CED": P.H. SPAAK, Combats inachevés. I. De l'indépendence
à l'alliance, Paris 1969, p.310. For Dulles statement, PRO: FO 1086/180, N.P.C.(54) 24, 30
September 1954.
26. K. ADENAEUR, Erinnerungen, 1953-1955, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 333-348.
27. PRO:FO 1986/180, N.P.C.(54)16, 29 Septembre 1954, Aide-mémoire sur le problème du contrôle
des armements.