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

The Western European Union Armaments Pool 51
However, Britain was keen to retain her economic leadership in Europe, to
secure implementation of the liberalization programme under the aegis of the
OECD and the GATT and prevent the continental countries shying away from the
so-called "Collective Approach to Freer Trade and Currencies", engineered in late
1952 to protect Britain's world role at the centre of the sterling area. 46 France was
considered a major obstacle on the way towards economic liberalization in Europe.
London had been closely watching the turn taken by French economic policy since
the beginning of 1954 and in the autumn praise for efforts in the direction of financial
rigour had gradually been giving way to some degree of excitement not far
short of alarm. 47 Although the agreement on French agricultural supplies to Germany,
agreed upon at la Celle-Saint-Cloud, had been intended to come into force
after the liberalization of 80% of both countries' external commerce, the authorities
in London suspected that protectionist and bilateral tendencies in France and Germany
underlay a thin veneer of free trade rhetoric. Although the agreement secured
a market for French agricultural products in Germany only, the Treasury was convinced
that Germany would want "one for one" as it was put and expected that
France would increase her imports of German engineering goods, especially cars
and tractors, thus reducing Britain's share of the French market. In early December
Britain expressed her worries to the French. The somewhat rough response she
received as well as derogatory comments by Mendès France about minor European
countries' role on the Continent painted a bleak future. 48
In Germany, after the universal uproar about France's almost avowed discriminatory
aims at the London Conference, positions became more differentiated. The
top political authorities showed varying degrees of hostility to the plan. Seen
through French eyes, the contest was between advocates of the dogmatic and unthinking
free market liberalism of the Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, and
other groups which were ready at least to listen to French schemes. The free marketers
would not allow armaments production its own peculiarities, resisted the
rebirth of a national armaments industry and relied on continuing American
supplies. The groups who were prepared to listen, among whom the French listed
Adenauer, the Auswärtiges Amt and, to a certain extent, the so-called Amt Blank,
the future Defence Ministry, were either considering political motives for an
entente with France or acknowledged that armaments, as industrial goods, were
indeed peculiar while seeing defence needs as unrelated to economic priorities. 49
On the other hand, at non-governmental level, the prospect of Franco-German
cooperation in armaments production called forth different reactions in the various
46. Some useful indications in B.W. MUIRHEAD, "Britain, Canada, and the Collective Approach to
Freer Trade and Payments, 1952-57", Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.20
1992/1, 108-126; see also, Scott NEWTON, "Britain, the Sterling Area and European Integration
1945-50, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol.13 1984-85/3, 162-178.
47. PRO: FO 317/198447.
48. See PRO: FO 371/109448, CF 11318/10, E.W. Meiklereid (Paris) 6 December 1954; in late
December Mendès France roughly declared that if the Benelux did not want to take part, the Armaments
Pool could well become a Franco-Italo-German enterprise.