ABSTRACT
When the Spaak Committee first met, the French government, although it did not oppose the discussion there of a common market, encouraged discussion of a different project, cooperation by the Six in the development of nuclear power. French enthusiasm for this project had various origins. It fitted well into the paradigm of technological and economic modernisation within which post-war French government had situated itself. The high investment cost of nuclear engineering, both financially and in terms of research skills, was an incentive to international cooperation. Because of its technological modernity and absence of accumulated vested interests, the nuclear sector appealed to Monnet as a further stage of supranational regulation of fuel and energy. It seemed a welcome relief from the long-established institutional cooperations and rivalries of the powerful vested interests in coal and steel. Furthermore, the very fact that nuclear power was the basis of superpower armaments seemed to demand some form of state supervision.
