ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that the reason why the French state agreed to sign the Treaties of Rome was due neither to the historical accident of Suez, nor to the force of federalist political ideas, nor to the inevitable process of economic development. For France the situation was complicated by the trading relations within the French Union. Both Prime Minister Guy Mollet and Foreign Minister Christian Pineau argued that a policy of European integration was the only way to solve France’s economic and colonial problems. Whereas the American government had previously been opposed to British plans to make sterling convertible on the grounds that it would break up the European Payments Union (EPU) and undermine the process of European integration, the situation was rather different in 1954. The EPU provided the first real debate in France over the nature and terms by which the French economy would be reintegrated into the international economy.
