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

The Bomb and Europe 81
French leader had preemptively rejected any bribe than after Kennedy's refusal to
offer one in 1961. "He is part visionary, part calculator", Dixon had characterized
de Gaulle in November 1961 in an internal analysis for Macmillan and the Foreign
Office, warning that "people often see one side of his personality and neglect the
other. But both are important". 71 Among others, Macmillan made this very mistake.
Initially he had thought of de Gaulle as more of a pragmatist, who would welcome
any attractive opportunity for a trade-off of interests, than perhaps he really
was. Later on, as the bitterness within the British government about his apparent
refusal to play according to the diplomatic rules increased, de Gaulle began to be
perceived as a much more stubborn dogmatist, determined from the very beginning
to exclude Britain from the process of European integration, than he had arguably
ever been. But at least, particularly after his remarks at Champs, ministers and
officials in London began to understand the previously neglected underlying ideological
reasons for de Gaulle's scepticism in relation to British EEC membership
much better than had been the case hitherto. Quite apart from the potentially
adverse effects on the future shape of the CAP, in which the French had an intense
economic interest, three possible results of EEC enlargement especially worried de
Gaulle: that the EEC might become "spiritually diluted", 72 that French political leadership
within it could be weakened, and that a larger, less tightly-knit Community
would be too closely linked to the US.
De Gaulle put much emphasis on the first of these arguments in his press conference
of 14 January 1963, portraying Britain as not being sufficiently "European"
in political, economic and cultural terms, to join Europe. This could hitherto perhaps
be dismissed as largely a convenient public excuse to distract from the real
reasons for the veto, such as the lack of an attractive nuclear offer. However, at
Champs de Gaulle had already spoken to Macmillan about Britain and Europe
along much the same lines, using the same arguments and sometimes even identical
phrases which indicates that they reflected more deeply rooted convictions.
"Was it possible for Britain to adopt a genuinely European approach?", de Gaulle
asked Macmillan, or was Britain not psychologically separated from the continental
countries by the channel. Did she not have many world-wide interests, and was
she not much too closely linked by political and cultural ties with America to join a
Community which, according to de Gaulle, had to keep and further develop a separate
European identity. "Europe must be Europe", he demanded much more forcefully
at Champs than he could convincingly explain. 73 In any case, King Alfred did
not easily fit in with Clovis and Charlemagne, Dixon had already observed after the
Birch Grove meeting. 74 Furthermore, de Gaulle was also clearly afraid that enlargement
would take the remaining dynamism out of the integration process and render
the EEC institutions and particularly the envisaged political cooperation
ineffective. At Champs he complained to Macmillan that without a French-Ger-
71. PRO PREM 11/3338 (16 November 1961).
72. PRO FO 371/164832/2 (12 December 1961).
73. PRO PREM 11/3775 (2-3 June 1962).
74. PRO PREM 11/3338 (26 November 1961).