"French Sectoral Strategies and the Diplomacy of European Integration during the 1950s"

Pitman, Paul M. (1995) "French Sectoral Strategies and the Diplomacy of European Integration during the 1950s". In: UNSPECIFIED, Charleston, South Carolina. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the introduction] This paper argues that French efforts to harness the Federal Republic's military-industrial potential through sectoral integration schemes played a significant role in the process of European integration during the period best known for a major breakthrough in general economic integration, the common market. In the years following the failure of the European Defense community (EDC), Paris sponsored proposals to pool armaments production under the Western European Union (WEU), to merge national atomic energy industries in Euratom, and to cooperate with Italy and Germany in developing atomic weapons. These initiatives complemented French positions in the negotiations regarding a six-power customs union, an OEEC-wide Free Trade Area, and the restoration of convertibility. To be sure, such attempts at military integration failed to produce signigicant practical results. However, their mere existence influenced what we now consider to have been more fruitful negotiations regarding the European economic order in important ways. For example, as I explore below, recent research indicates that in the fall of 1956 hopes that the Euratom powers would be capable of producing atomic weapons helped seal Franco-German compromise on the Rome Treatries. When, and if, additional relevant archival material is made public, we will be better able to weigh the relative significance of such episodes. I submit, however, that it is already clear that any satisfactory account of European integration during the 1950s must take into account the peculiarities of the Continent's military-industrial order.

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