The Price of Victory

Post-war Labour and Conservative governments saw the UK’s global interests as lying primarily with the United States and the Commonwealth. They took no part in the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community or in the proposed European Defence Community, though, when the EDC idea foundered, Prime Minister Anthony Eden played a prominent role in promoting European defence, just as Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had done in fostering the establishment of NATO. The British sent only an observer to the Messina Conference (1956) that negotiated the terms of the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community (EEC). The UK set up its own trading bloc (EFTA) but it could not compete politically or economically with the EEC and, in 1961, the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan applied for EEC membership, despite the opposition of France’s President de Gaulle.

Crises of Commemoration: Cold War, Decolonization and the Bungled 1954 D-Day Commemoration

Abstract— In 1954, international dignitaries and veterans joined the commemoration of the Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy, though not everything went according to plan. For the French organizers, chief among them Gaullist deputy Raymond Triboulet, the event was intended to communicate a unifying, pro-Allied message amid a turbulent political climate. By June 1954, France had recently suffered a decisive defeat at Dien Bien Phu and was politically gripped by the divisive prospect of a European Defence Community. In debates over these crises, war memories surfaced and France’s experience of the Occupation and Liberation enflamed passions. For many who attended the Normandy ceremony in 1954, the missteps of organizers created tension and upset, endangering Allied participation in the Paris Liberation ceremonies to follow. This moment of disjuncture illuminates how currents of memory, international diplomacy, decolonization and broader Cold War tensions all intersected and influenced each other on the Normandy beaches.

The European Defence Community

In 1950, France, West Germany, Italy, and the Benelux countries started talks that would culminate in a treaty for a European Defence Community (EDC), a treaty that was signed but never ratified. The initiative for a common European army was the French response to the American demand for a rearmed Germany. Against the background of the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950 and the numerical superiority of Soviet conventional ground forces on the European continent, US President Truman wanted to see the major increase in US defense capacity in Europe compensated by an equivalent effort in Europe, including a rearmament of Germany. For France, such rearmament, only five years after the end of World War II, was politically unacceptable. With the support of Jean Monnet, Prime Minister René Pléven proposed a scheme for a European army operating within the framework of a single political and military authority. The plan included a European defense minister, appointed by national governments and responsible to a Council of Ministers and a European Assembly. While each state would retain national defense and command structures, there would be no German defense ministry or army. The German troops would be recruited directly into the European army. The Treaty creating a European Defence Community was signed in Paris on May 27, 1952, by all six negotiation parties (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Italy, and Germany), but was not ratified by France, the initiator of the initiative. On August 30, 1954, the French Assembly decided not to put the EDC treaty to a vote, meaning that it in effect rejected the proposal for a European army. The problem of German rearmament was ultimately addressed by admitting West Germany into the Western Union, which was renamed the Western European Union, and by welcoming it as a member of NATO.

The Beyen Plan (1951-1954)

The rapid expansion of European integration after 1950 triggered lasting existential unease in The Hague, fuelling fierce Dutch revisionism. Alliance-building with supporters of Atlantic free trade remained a priority, and swift British (and Scandinavian) accession to the ‘Small Europe’ of the Six was seen as essential. The Dutch government had therefore been very sceptical about the proposed European Defence Community (EDC); after this failed in 1954, Dutch policymakers feared new negotiations for a relance européenne would strengthen Small Europe and its built-in traditions of politicisation and dirigisme. Ironically, the Common Market – proposed by Dutch Foreign Minister Johan Willem Beyen, and eventually enormously profitable for the Dutch export economy – was considered a ruse when it was presented in the Hague.

Section 2 Provisions on the Common Security and Defence Policy

It is necessary to see the CSDP section in the context of the historical development of this integral but specific aspect of CFSP. Such an approach allows to comprehend fully the significant extension of the security and defence component of the EU in the course of the different Treaty reforms as well as to grasp its exact meaning and limitations. The current Section 2 of Chapter 2 of Title V TEU is the result of a long process that started with the failed European Defence Community (EDC) in 1952.