Journal of European Integration History – Revue d'histoire de l'

Challenge to the Community 33nauer early or to break-up the EEC. Next to close relations with the United States,Franco-German cooperation remained one of the two main pillars of German foreignand European policy also under Adenauer's successor Erhard. 100There would, however, be life after de Gaulle. The enlargement debate of 1961-3and the abrupt French veto determined the formation of long-term preferences inGerman European policy, including EEC enlargement at the earliest possiblemoment, which of course was also strongly supported by the Netherlands and Belgiumand increasingly by Italy. On 14 January 1963 it became clear that littleprogress could be made in European integration until de Gaulle's departure fromFrench politics. The veto largely paralysed the Six, who concentrated first on devisingconsultation mechanisms with the British and then on balancing their industrialand agricultural interests in preparation for the Kennedy Round of the GATT, onlyto slide into the constitutional “empty chair” crisis of 1965-6, which illustrated oncemore the deep divisions within the EEC.❋What EFTA and its member states established during the 1960s was, most of all,that the contradiction between widening and deepening of the Community constructedby the protagonists of a tightly-knit core Europe was artificial. At the verylatest, this became clear when the Benelux governments linked progress in the talksabout political cooperation among the Six with French support for EEC enlargementand full British participation in political cooperation, which led to the failureof the Fouchet negotiations in April 1962. This episode showed very clearly that inorder to manage internal interest mediation and succeed in enhancing the cohesionof the inner core of European integration, the Community needed to address itsresponsibility for all of Europe and to allow for the economic and political interestsof other European states on the periphery – a linkage of two issues which wouldcontinue to play a prominent role in European integration, not least over the MaastrichtTreaty and northern enlargement and yet again over the 1996-7 IntergovernmentalConference and eastern enlargement.Wolfram Kaiser99. On German European policy after de Gaulle's veto see W. HÖLSCHER, “Krisenmanagement inSachen EWG. Das Scheitern des Beitritts Großbritanniens und die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen”,in: R.A. BLASIUS (ed.), Von Adenauer zu Erhard. Studien zur Auswärtigen Politik derBundesrepublik Deutschland 1963, München 1994, pp.9-44 and G. SCHMIDT, “Test of Strength:The United States, Germany, and de Gaulle's “No” to Britain in Europe, 1958-1963”, in:SCHMIDT, Zwischen Bündnissicherung, pp.281-348.100. For an introduction to the European policy of the Erhard government of 1963-6 see H. MÜLLER-ROSCHACH, Die deutsche Europapolitik 1949-1977. Eine politische Chronik, Bonn 1980,pp.141-80.