journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

Our Man in Paris: The British Embassy in Paris and the Second
UK Application to Join the EEC, 1966-67
43
Lasse Michael Boehm
The article draws upon the uncompleted memoirs of Sir Patrick Reilly who was the
British Ambassador to Paris between 1965 and 1968. These memoirs are held in
the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. It also uses the files of the British
embassy in Paris and the ambassador’s correspondence with the Foreign Office
(FO), which have recently been released, and are stored in the National Archives in
London.
The British embassy in Paris was, and remains, one of Britain’s most important
embassies. The prestige in which this post was held is reflected in the earlier career
of Sir Patrick Reilly: a former fellow of All Souls College Oxford, he had
previously been ambassador to Moscow from 1957 to 1960, and deputy
under-secretary of State from 1960 to 1965. Before coming to Paris, Reilly could
look back on one of the more distinguished careers in the Foreign Office. In the
mid-1960s, the post of ambassador to France was the more significant because of
Gaullist opposition to British membership in the EEC. The debacle of 1963 had
been mortifying for the then British ambassador, Sir Pierson Dixon, whose own
views on negotiating tactics had not always dovetailed with those of the other
negotiators.
Only two years after Reilly took up his post, British policy towards France was
once again in disarray. In November 1967 French president Charles de Gaulle
pronounced his second veto on Britain’s attempt to join the EEC. The Wilson
government had ignored vital advice on de Gaulle’s views, and when it did finally
recognise the French government’s unwillingness to let Britain into the EEC, it was
too late. Was this failure to anticipate a French veto a failure of diplomacy, or the
result of political miscalculations? And what was the role of Reilly in these events?
The first moves: January – June 1966
For two years after the first French veto in 1963, Britain did not take any new
initiatives in its policy towards the EEC. Only with the „empty chair crisis” in late
1965 did the Foreign Office begin to consider the possibility of a renewed British
application. 1 France’s absence from the EEC’s institutions led to a rift regarding
tactics between the embassy in Paris and the Foreign Office in London. The
Foreign Office argued that EEC entry would only be possible by securing the
1. United Kingdom National Archives, formerly Public Record Office, Kew, London, (henceforth
UKNA): FO371/188327, Note by Sir Con O’Neill, 13 January 1966; UKNA: FO371/188328,
‘Britain and Europe: Possible Approach by the Five’, January 1966.