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The Bomb and Europe 65
The Bomb and Europe
Britain, France, and the EEC Entry Negotiations
1961-1963
Wolfram Kaiser
"De Gaulle is trying to dominate Europe", a downcast Macmillan wrote in his diary
at the end of January 1963. "It is the end – or at least a temporary bar – to everything
for which I have worked for many years (...). All our policies at home and
abroad are in ruins." 1 A fortnight earlier the British Prime Minister's residual hopes
for a European settlement had been dashed when de Gaulle finally rejected Britain's
application to join the European Economic Community (EEC), issuing his
harshly worded veto during the weekly press conference at the Elysée. Answering a
question from a journalist, the French President suggested that Britain was not yet
fit to join the Community because her political interests, economic needs and cultural
traditions were still incompatible with those of the core continental European
countries. "It is predictable", the French President concluded with a view to an
enlarged Community, "that the cohesion of all its members (...) would not last for
very long and that, in fact, it would seem like a colossal Atlantic community under
American dependence and direction, and that is not at all what France wanted to do
and is doing, which is a strictly European construction." 2
De Gaulle's veto abruptly ended the protracted entry negotiations in Brussels
which followed the British decision of July 1961 to apply for membership, but
which only began in earnest in Spring 1962 after the Six had agreed on the future
shape of a large section of their Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These negotiations
were only very superficially concerned primarily with transitional periods
for British horticulture or special arrangements for New Zealand butter. Although
very substantial economic interests were at stake, particularly in respect of the
future of British agriculture and of the European Economic Community’s trading
relationships with the countries of the Commonwealth, the British government's
internal deliberations both before and during the negotiations show that it was prepared
to pay a high economic price for securing the expected political benefits of
being in the "inner circles of the Six". 3 At the same time, it was always likely that
for de Gaulle the economic benefits which the French could negotiate in Brussels
would not suffice. In order to bring the General around to accepting British membership
of an enlarged Community, which could be expected to be substantially
less French in character, political incentives were needed. From the very beginning
1. H. MACMILLAN, Diaries (28 January 1963), quoted in A. HORNE, Macmillan 1957-1986. Vol. II
of the Official Biography, London 1989, p. 427.
2. Quoted in J. LACOUTURE, De Gaulle. The Ruler 1945-1970, London 1992, p. 358.
3. PRO CAB 129/102,I/107 (6 July 1960). For the reasoning behind the decision to apply for EEC
membership see W. KAISER, "To join, or not to join: the «Appeasement» policy of Britain's first
EEC application", in: B. BRIVATI and H. JONES (eds.), From Reconstruction to Integration. Britain
and Europe since 1945, Leicester 1993, pp. 144-156.