France and the Construction of Europe, 1944-2007 by Michael Sutton

Author:Michael Sutton [Sutton, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, France, Modern, 20th Century, Political Science, International Relations, General, Political Economy
ISBN: 9780857452900
Google: 9SerAQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2011-03-15T01:06:26+00:00

Pompidou’s Leaning towards the UK

In his discussions with Soames, de Gaulle had situated the prospect of the UK’s EC membership – entailing perhaps a radical revamping of the Treaty of Rome – in his preferred conceptual framework of a European union of states. In keeping with the spirit of the earlier Fouchet proposals, there was the mooted goal of political cooperation between states in the sphere of foreign policy and defence, but now with the UK’s conceivably taking part. He reiterated his view that larger states should play a privileged role in the shaping of Western Europe’s future.

To a large extent, this mindset was shared by Pompidou, de Gaulle’s longest serving prime minister (1962–68), who, after having separated himself from the French president in the wake of the événements of May 1968, became his successor in June 1969. In particular, Pompidou’s view of the EC was also centred on the primacy of intergovernmental cooperation, with the Commission relegated to a clearly subordinate role. A native of the Auvergne, he was endowed with the proverbial hard-headed commonsense of that region, and he tended to be wary of any plans for Europe’s future that smacked of misplaced rationalism in politics. But what he did believe in was the importance of occasional meetings of EC heads of state or government to keep the whole enterprise on a proper course, as witness his leading role in convening two summits, that in The Hague in December 1969 and that in Paris in October 1972, where the larger member states could pull more freely their weight than was possible in the institutional straitjacket of the Treaty of Rome.

Given such views, the idea of EC membership for the UK posed no insuperable problem for Pompidou. By the winter of 1968–69, when he was no longer in government, he had become convinced that the UK should not be continually barred from EC entry. And during his presidential election campaign in May 1969 he publicly declared himself in favour of its accession. However, there was one key precondition for Pompidou, as there had also been for Debré at the time of the latter’s initiating what became the ‘Soames affair’. The financial arrangement governing the automaticity of the CAP’s financing had to be in place before any accession talks could open. After his election as president, Pompidou’s choice of Chaban-Delmas as prime minister and the appointment of Maurice Schumann – a centrist from the defunct MRP – as foreign minister signalled that he would take a positive attitude towards the EC’s future, with enlargement viewed as a major step forward.

There were changed perceptions in Paris of, first, West Germany’s place in the EC and, secondly, the tightness of the relation between the US and the UK. A few years earlier, Kiesinger’s replacing Erhard as Chancellor had allowed for some improvement in Franco-German relations, but the unwelcome German forcefulness on the monetary front in November 1968 had been a setback. Pompidou himself, on taking over from de Gaulle, was haunted by

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