ABSTRACT
WALTER HALLSTEIN (1901-82) was the first President of the European Com m ission, serving from 1958 to 1967. He had led the West German delegation to the conference that discussed the Schuman Plan in 1950, and had attended the meeting in Messina in June 1955 that agreed to establish a com m on market. He believed strongly in economic and political integration, enjoyed considerable personal prestige throughout the Six, but especially in France, and in 1958 began to make the Commission the motivating force of the European Communities (EC). His vigorous leadership contributed to the rapid development of the EC in their first years of operation. Hallstein saw the Commission as the nucleus of a future European government and on one occasion said that he could be regarded as a kind of European Prime Minister. He held a large part of the responsibility for some of the proposals rejected by President Charles de Gaulle and which
led to the em pty chair crisis of 1965. Hallstein interpreted the resolution of the crisis through the Luxembourg Com prom ise as effectively reducing the primary role of the Commission as the initiator of policy and the core of the EC. W ith his chances of re-election as President doubtful in 1967, he chose instead to resign.
