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Realization
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Jean Monnet and the EDC
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The rearming of Germany was a big problem for France but a opportunity for Jean Monnet. He wanted to seize this
opportunity to break through the conditions that protect the status quo and introduce new elements that again favor
further change. He launched the Schuman Plan with this in mind. Monnet summarized his idea in the concept of
"small steps":
"Europe will not be conjured up at a stroke, nor by an overall design; it will be attained by
concrete achievements generating an active community of interest"
Monnet talked often about this dynamic outlook of change. He liked the metaphor, invented during his frequent
mountain walks, about the changing view as one climbed up the mountain path.
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For Monnet, the crucial step was always the first. Everything else would depend on its success. The first step was
the ECSC which seemed to be successful. The moment had come for the next step; without it, the whole integration
process would come to a stop. The next step was to be the defence. Monnet seized the problem of rearming Germany
and used it as a means to further European military integration.
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On August 23 Monnet drafted a letter to his old associate, René Pleven, the Prime Minister of France:
"We are operating with partners. These partners happen to be the most powerful
in the world, they have helped us, and without them we could not have resolved our
"material" troubles after the war. (€) Their help has been material. They continue
to think in material terms. What they need, and we need with them, is a political
concept, that is, a spiritual and ethical one. I propose you bring to the partnership
a strong, constructive concept as well as a determination to build up a stout
external defence. (€) the establishment of a continental Western Europe federated
around an expanded Schuman Plan."
What is the most noteworthy here is that Monnet is stressing the links between the Schuman Plan and a common
defence policy.
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But while being federalist and idealist, Monnet gave also an impression of being opportunist. He told Schuman that
France must regain the initiative because the Germans, with the aid of the USA, were anyway going to rearm and
if they did it nationally, then whole process of integration and especially the Schuman Plan would be in jeopardy.
This meant that Germans would become too independent and would not need European integration to further their
politics. France had to act before it was too late. Monnet cleverly simplified his "European idea" to this idea of only
defending France's interests; it was more easier for French political leaders to accept.
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During the first half of September Monnet worked with his team on a "European plan for defence" and when it was
ready Pleven took it and presented it on October 24 to the l'Assemblée nationale, which endorsed its ideas by 343
votes to 220. The proposal, logically called the Pleven Plan, was to be the basis of discussion about the establishment
of a European Defence Community. It provided for a European Army under the Atlantic umbrella run by a European
Minister of defence and the Council of Ministers, with a joint commander, common budget and common arms
procurement. But negotiations were not to be started before the Schuman Plan had been signed; and, for all but the
Germans, it was to be an army, not the army. The French, Belgians, and so on, could keep national forces apart from
the European Army for colonial and other purposes. Only the Germans would have a European duty but no national
option. It was a proposition to rearm the Germans without re-establishing a German army.
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Even at the last minute, Pleven was uneasy at what he was taking on. He wondered if he was committing an error.
Also Monnet was far from being in love with the scheme. Several people working near him at the time had the
impression that he regarded the European Army as at best premature. This is quite clear in the context of sectorial
integration and spillover tactics: There is big difference between introducing supranationalism into a specified sector
of heavy industry and establishing a common federalist institutions into the heart of the defence policy of a
nation€state. But the plan was already on the table and there was no other choice than to take it up and wait for
reactions
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The initial American attitude to EDC was cool. But soon the American High Commissioner in West Germany and
the American commander of NATO lent their voices to the idea, and the United States became an important
supporter of the project. When former Allied Commander-in-Chief, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became US
President in November 1952, he and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles were already its enthusiastic partisans.
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German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was for the establishment of the EDC but there was considerable opposition
within the country, especially by the opposition Social Democrat Party, to the whole notion of rearmament. In Great
Britain, there was a chance of participation in the EDC when Winston Churchill, a supporter of the Council of
Europe, returned as a premier in October 1951. But later, however, the new British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden,
firmly announced that Britain would not become a member of the EDC.
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The negotiations to establish a European Defence Community in parallel to the ECSC were very long. Not until 27
January 1952, was the Treaty signed, in Paris. At the same time it was agreed that Federal Germany would recover
its full status as a nation. From the signing of the treaty, the task was now to ratify the EDC. Ratification debates
were successfully concluded in Germany (spring 1953), Netherlands (July 1953), Belgium (November 1953) and
Luxembourg (April 1954). Jean Monnet took no official part in the negotiations.
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EPC: the integration deepens
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But then, before the French parliament ratification, Adenauer dropped a federal bomb and gave even more hope to
those wishing faster and deeper integration. He was the first to notice, and say it out loud, that a European army
without a correspondingly unified European foreign policy would be rather illogical. The federalist implications of
the dilemma were very clear: a European army would of course need European POLITICAL control of a type that
could not be provided by the EDC institutions.
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Adenauer's suggestion was then given to a special ECSC assembly enlarged to give it the number of representatives
of the projected EDC assembly which then turned itself into an ad hoc EDC body. Its task was to consider and report
on the feasibility and structures of a European Political Community. It did this and accepted the draft for the EPC
on March 1953.
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The European Political Community was not to be just a third community, but the beginning of a comprehensive
federation to which the ECSC and EDC would be subordinated. Its institutional structure was to be complex, with
a European Executive Council, a Council of National Ministers, a Court of Justice and a popularly elected
Parliament.
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When the Dutch Foreign Minister, concerned with fast political and military integration, suggested equally extensive
economic integration, then one can really talk about the spillover € effect. But even though a rapid integration seemed
to have occurred, there was nothing concrete except for the ECSC. There was a lot of enthusiasm but it flagged when
politicians had to switch their attention from abstract or grand designs to the dull everyday practical details.
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