ABSTRACT
When in response to Robert Schuman's proposal in May 1950 for a supranational European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) the Permanent Under-Secretary's Committee in the Foreign Office confirmed that association should be the goal of British policy towards European plans for supranational integration, they were confirming what had been the first response of most officials to the Schuman Plan. ‘With, but not of’, as Churchill later noted about the EDC, was already the policy towards the ECSC by mid July 1950. Consensus had been reached in Cabinet and by officials that ‘we shall hope to find means of associating ourselves with any organisations which may emerge as a result of these negotiations’.1
