Fallout by Grégoire Mallard

Author:Grégoire Mallard [Mallard, Grégoire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780226157894
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Table 6.2 Conditions placed by the United States and France upon British entry into Euratom

In fact, the British position was a divine surprise to the Eurofederalists on the Continent, and a bad surprise to the French government. Indeed, de Gaulle had initially hoped that the British entry into Euratom would give France the opportunity to clearly reject once and for all the goal of placing Europe’s dual-use nuclear industries under the jurisdiction of Euratom.169 The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that before 1962, the declarations of the British “clearly show that the British are less prone to apply the Rome Treaty than we are,” and that “the British entry would give us a strong support in our bargaining position with the other five members.”170 The French government immediately saw the threat that such conditions to the British adhesion to the communities represented: de Gaulle was aware that Eurofederalists could use the British bid for membership to give legitimacy to an extension of Euratom’s jurisdiction to France’s military nuclear affairs.171 The French government thus consistently refused the British proposal from the beginning to the end of negotiations in 1962. It made it equally clear to the Europeans that it conditioned British membership in Euratom on their decision to share nuclear military technology and materials, which France did not have at that time, on a bilateral basis and outside the Euratom Treaty framework (see table 6.2).172 Indeed, the French government was convinced that its nuclear-weapons program could be quickly developed “if the U.S. accepts that British knowledge be made available for France”173—in particular, that “France could make considerable economies” if it was granted “availability of [some weapons-grade] HEU for military studies (H-bombs and warheads) five years before the end of Pierrelatte,”174 the future French uranium-enrichment plant. To match the British proposal to “Euratomize” their enrichment plant, the French were forced to massively increase the appropriation of funds for the construction of the uranium-enrichment plant in Pierrelatte,175 in order to send a signal to the French military forces that the end of the Algerian war would enable the French government to spend more on its nuclear program.176 It also signaled to France’s Euratom partners that the French were committed to mastering the enrichment technology quickly and independently of British aid, and outside the Euratom Treaty framework.177 As the French made clear, they did not “ask the British to Euratomize a British research center in exchange for their adhesion,”178 but rather, they wanted the British “to provide us with some fuel (Pu) [plutonium] for fast reactors as well as some patented information”179 on military designs. The discussion advanced no further until the fall of 1962: the controversy over whether the British bid for adhesion to Euratom would help Euratom extend its jurisdiction remained open, or rather, closed without any prospect of compromise.

When Opacity Failed the Eurofederalists—Again (Fall 1962–Fall 1964)

In the summer of 1962, even if Eurofederalists realized that the United States had severely limited the extent to which Euratom member states could use

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