ABSTRACT
Some Member States were already coming to the view that the European Political Co-operation system needed to be reconsidered as they wished to diminish the gap between intentions and outcomes that clearly still existed in terms of the endeavours of the Member States of the European Community to have a common, if not single, foreign and security policy. In foreign policy caution has reigned. When General de Gaulle returned to power in France in 1958, he lost no time in proposing that the Six should engage in foreign policy co-operation. After the debacle of the French-induced demise of the European Political Community, companion of the European Defence Community, the Foreign Ministers of the six countries which switched to an exclusively Economic Community did not resile entirely from the objective of wider integration. The contradiction lay in the fact that the Member States have not been willing to go beyond an insistence on preserving national sovereignty in this area of policy.
