ABSTRACT

British hopes of stopping ‘federalist’ moves in Europe with the European Defence Community’s failure and the success of the Western European Union were immediately quashed. Even before the ink was dry on the agreements concerning German sovereignty, in Paris in October 1954, parallel FrancoGerman negotiations were underway on their further economic co-operation or association. These included the possibility of German investment in the French Union (the French equivalent of the Commonwealth). By November 1954 the Americans were pressing ‘Little Europe’ to turn the WEU into a single trading area, an economic ‘United States of Europe’. They envisaged a two-tier economic and political structure to balance the military unification of the WEU. One tier would be a ‘Little Europe’ of the six states, the other would be the UK with eventually perhaps the Scandinavians and others joining. (The stock reaction of the US to the creation of a new European organisation – as seen previously with the OEEC and EPU – was to try and widen its scope.)

British Foreign Office officials feared these initiatives might lead to the UK’s exclusion from Europe and to a trade war with a new superstate, created under American and German auspices, while British forces were committed to its defence under NATO and the WEU. Four years later, in January 1958, under the Treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community (EEC) started to operate. Although far from being a superstate, Britain had indeed chosen to stay out of the EEC while its army and tactical airforce in West Germany defended its frontiers (European Review, 49, November 1954; 50, December 1954).