This is a short essay, which takes about 10 minutes to read.

France is now the leading advocateof the EuropeanUnion’s strategic autonomy : a dramatic reversal compared with 1954, when its own National Assembly scuppered the European Defence Community (EDC).

Thierry Breton, a former EU commissioner who was denied an entry visa by the US due to his key role in promoting and implementing the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), explains in his latest book , *Le Dix renoncements qui ont fait la France* (The Ten Sacrifices That Made France), published by Plon, explains what happened in 1954.

The fathers of European integration: Monnet and Schuman

The Frenchmen Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman were the founding fathers of European integration. Encouraged by the successes of their first ‘community’ (the European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC, established in 1952) and spurred on by the Americans, they went a step further, proposing the creation of a European army, which was deemed necessary for the defence of Western Europe against the backdrop of the tense Cold War.

The treaty was ratified fairly quickly by all Member States. Except in France, where it became bogged down in a heated debate that divided the political parties, reigniting old anti-German and anti-American sentiments on the one hand, and pro-Soviet sentiments on the other, which in turn formed a strange coalition of opposition.

The failure of the EEC and the birth of the European Economic Community

Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France, refusing to take a stance, left it to Parliament to decide, without giving any explicit instructions. On 30 August 1954, a ‘no’ vote marked the end of the European defence project.
To recover and look to the future, the founding fathers of Europe immediately proposed the creation of an economic Europe, based on the strength of the single market. This was a project that was decidedly more consumer-oriented than political.

It would have taken seventy years to begin restoring to Europe the power it needed to tackle the world’s brutal changes collectively.

From opponents to advocates

A historical paradox: it is France which, despite having once turned its back on European defence (not entirely for the wrong reasons at the time), is now at the forefront of it, whilst respecting the sovereignty of the Member States.

In his highly acclaimed speech in Milan at the L’Europeista assembly, Mario Monti described Monnet as one of the founding fathers of European integration.
Monnet’s approach envisaged the gradual transfer of national sovereignty to supranational institutions through concrete steps and practical solidarity. According to Mario Monti, the European Union must pursue ambitious multilateral governance, drawing inspiration from this model.

The European idea: from Victor Hugo to Aristide Briand

Europe is a French idea. On 22 August 1849, at the International Congress for Universal Peace in Paris, Victor Hugo evoked the messianic vision of the ‘United States of Europe’.

Ten years after the Great War, which was nothing short of suicide for Europe, Aristide Briand, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered a historic speech on 11 September 1929 before the General Assembly of the League of Nations on the indispensable union of the European peoples around a ‘federal bond’.
The global economic crisis, the isolation of states and economies, the rise of totalitarianism and then a new world war that reduced Europe to a field of rubble, decided otherwise.

The Schuman Declaration and the establishment of the ECSC

It was France that revived this vision, whilst at the same time proposing concrete measures to bring it about. On 9 May 1950, Robert Schuman delivered a brief statement at the Salon de l’Horloge at the Quai d’Orsay on the means of establishing a lasting peace in Europe.
The term ‘European integration’ was used for the first time in an official speech, setting out the new direction for French diplomacy.

Schuman outlined a plan for a union that would effectively cement Franco-German reconciliation through control of the raw materials essential to the war industry. To prevent another war, it was necessary to bring together arms manufacturers and compel them to show European solidarity within a European Coal and Steel Community.

Schuman was born in 1886 in Luxembourg to a father who hailed from Lorraine, a fiercely contested region. He was particularly committed to the idea of breaking the cycle of wars on the Old Continent once and for all.
Schuman also introduced the idea of a higher authority independent of national governments, whose decisions would be binding on Member States – in other words, the supranational element.

The project bore the hallmark of his friend Jean Monnet, whose ideas were circulating at the time in the highest echelons of government, diplomatic circles and industry.
Monnet was a man of international vision, long convinced that France’s problems, like those of any other European country, could no longer be resolved solely within national borders.

The success of the ECSC and the principles of integration

However, he believed that intergovernmental cooperation was not enough to revitalise Europe, and that it was necessary to move towards supranational integration, which would inevitably entail partial but painful sacrifices of national sovereignty.
In 1950, he served as Commissioner-General for France’s Modernisation and Re-equipment Plan.

Launched swiftly and established in July 1952, the ECSC – which brought together France, Italy, West Germany (FRG), Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – was a resounding success. It established the idea that a rapprochement between former enemies was not only possible but also beneficial.
The ECSC sowed the seeds of a European consciousness amongst six states and a European administrative elite.

At the same time, Schuman, Monnet and their European partners – such as the Belgian Paul-Henri Spaak, the Italian Alcide de Gasperi and the German Konrad Adenauer – had the opportunity to put those same principles into practice in the very different field of defence.

Against this backdrop of war, the Americans wanted Western Europe to rearm as quickly as possible in order to withstand a potential Soviet attack, even if this meant rearming Germany, just ten years after the Third Reich’s capitulation.
It was important to them to re-establish German military units, but under the command of NATO, the integrated organisation for military and strategic assistance established by Washington in 1949.

The Pleven Plan and the European Political Community

The plan was presented on 24 October 1950 by the French Prime Minister, René Pleven, who outlined it to Parliament, which was impressed by his solemn statements of principle.
In this ‘Pleven Plan’, which was amended and debated over a period of two years, Monnet and his colleagues tackled the issue of defence using the same principle as that of the ECSC: sectoral integration, in this case within a common army, under the aegis of a supranational political institution.

The Pleven Plan set out ambitious proposals: the formation of European divisions comprising national battalions, the appointment of a European Minister of Defence accountable to the ECSC Assembly, and so on.
However, for Jean Monnet, the ECSC – like the European project to which he aspired more broadly – was not intended to be a rival to NATO, but rather to extend its reach.

The French opposition: Communists and Gaullists

For this reason, in 1953, the ECSC Assembly proposed a European Political Community (EPC), inspired by federalist principles, to complement the EDC.
However, the two main French political parties vehemently opposed the proposal: the Communist Party, led by Maurice Thorez, and General de Gaulle’s newly formed ‘Rassemblement du Peuple Français’ (RPF).

These two parties formed a curious ‘front of rejection’, despite the ideological chasm that separated them.
The Communists, who officially advocated pacifism but unofficially served the strategic interests of the USSR, saw the EDC as a sign of imperialist militarisation orchestrated by the Americans.

For their part, the Gaullists of the RPF saw the European Defence Community (EDC) as a sign of national capitulation.
In their view, the EDC would have been detrimental to France’s national independence and would have jeopardised its vital interests by depriving it of its army.
The plan for a European army was, according to General de Gaulle, completely absurd: an army can only be national – which was the very essence of military commitment – and this ‘military Babel’ that the EDC would have represented could not have instilled in its soldiers a genuine desire to fight.

The intellectual Emmanuel Mounier, for example, saw in the project – against the backdrop of a France increasingly influenced by American mass culture – nothing but the danger of submission to a foreign culture from across the Atlantic.
In the magazine *Esprit*, Jean-Marie Domenach denounced a ‘false Europe’ subservient to the United States in 1953.

The interests of the colonial empire also contributed to the hostility towards the treaty. François Mitterrand, president of the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance (UDSR), believed that the European Defence Community (EDC) would undermine France’s presence in Africa, thereby undermining the unity of the French army.

The weight of historical memory

The socialist Jules Moch, Minister of National Defence in the Pleven government in 1950, did not mince his words when speaking of the German threat: three invasions in seventy-five years, and above all the deaths of millions of people in the gas chambers and crematoria, were, in his view, sufficient grounds to believe that the Germans had a ‘different mentality’ and that it would be wise to be wary of their rearmament.

Jewish organisations, such as the CRIF (Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France), campaigned against the CED, recalling the ‘German crimes’.

Shortly before the vote, the elderly Radical MP Édouard Herriot delivered a solemn and moving statement, recalling his experiences of deportation to Germany and the crimes that country had committed against France and other European states.
His sentiments seemed sincere, echoing those of the elderly Daladier, who, at the Radical Party congress in March 1954, had declared that a visit to Auschwitz was essential before any discussion of German rearmament.

The Gaullists Michel Debré, the future architect of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, and Jacques Chaban-Delmas also spoke out against the text.
The MPs then voted and, by 319 votes to 263, the National Assembly rejected the EEC Treaty.

The paradox of German rearmament

Paradoxically, France had turned its back on Europe in August 1954 to protect itself from German rearmament – which it had largely orchestrated itself – and less than a year later, it had no choice but to accept the inevitable remilitarisation of West Germany.

In the 1950s, the German people had, paradoxically, become one of the most pacifist in Europe.
The Americans and the British, as well as many European states that had once been occupied by German armies and cruelly subjected to their laws of war, seemed to have overcome their anti-German prejudices.

Only the French still couldn’t quite shake off their reservations, which were certainly not entirely unfounded.
Shall we wipe the slate clean? It’s not that simple!

As for the American ‘manoeuvres’ and their potential repercussions on European sovereignty, no one can say that the reservations of the Gaullists of the time were unfounded. Current events remind us of this on a daily basis.

No, what was undoubtedly crucial at that decisive moment for the future of our continent was France’s failure to address, collectively and in a timely manner, an issue of vital importance to Europe, by failing to exercise its influence through appropriate diplomatic action, carefully coordinated with all the parties involved, with a view to drafting a text that would serve both the general European interest and French aspirations.

In any case, seventy years on, European defence still needs to be (re)invented.
But time is running out!