de Schoutheete, Philippe. (2006) The Evolution of Intergovernmental Cooperation in the European process. Egmont European Affairs Publication, 2006. [Working Paper]
Abstract
The Luxemburg report, also known as the Davignon report, adopted by Foreign Ministers in October 1970 is a generally accepted departure point for intergovernmental cooperation among members of the European Community. It was the first time that the “Community method”, devised by Jean Monnet and consolidated by the treaty of Rome on the basis of texts prepared by the Spaak Committee, was deliberately discarded, in the field of foreign policy, in favour of the traditional methods of diplomatic consultation, in an exercise initially known as “political cooperation”. The significance of that initial step can only be understood by a flashback to the failure of the Fouchet negotiations in the spring of 1962. That negotiation, launched and largely dominated by General de Gaulle, had been understood by his partners as a deliberate attempt to subordinate the nascent European Community to an intergovernmental construction established in Paris, presumably dominated by France, and without any of the supranational procedures or institutions which had made Monnet’s proposals acceptable to the smaller countries. Its final failure was immediately perceived as a turning point, as a clear parting of the ways between the Gaullist concept of l’Europe des patries and the supranational concept developed in the fifties. It was moreover quite acrimonious: participants accusing each other of arrogant and irresponsible behaviour. In his memoirs Paul-Henri Spaak, who played a prominent role both as Belgian Foreign Minister and as foster father of the treaty of Rome, clearly puts the responsibility on the shoulders of Couve de Murville. Years later, in a reflective mood, he asked himself, in my presence, whether he had not, at the time, been too intransigent. Whatever the merits of the case, the exercise left all parties with the sour taste of an important failure.
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