Creation of European Defence Community
From our own correspondent
10 May 1952
Paris
At six o’clock this evening the text of a treaty for the establishment of a European Defence Community, with a common administrative and military authority for national defence, a common budget, a common uniform, an identical period of military service and a common military code, was initialed by the heads of the delegations of the six participant nations: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
The negotiations have lasted 20 months since M Pleven made his suggestion in 1950, which was then treated with scornful hilarity by many people who have since come to consider it in a rather different light. It is true that there are no signs in Paris of enthusiasm about the revolutionary step, the preparations for which have now been completed by the experts. On the other hand, there are no signs of violent opposition.
What is more, although the European Defence Community has not yet received the approval of the six governments or the formal ratification of the six parliaments, its draft charter comes into the world accompanied by two protocols covering the mutual engagements of members of the European Defence Community and of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, as well as the draft of a treaty between the members of the community and the United Kingdom whose government not so long ago barely concealed its scepticism about the feasibility of the whole scheme.
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European army treaty signed: promises of support from Britain and US
From our diplomatic correspondent
28 May 1952
Paris
The fifty-year treaty setting up a European Defence Community between France, Italy, the Federal German Republic, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg was signed this afternoon in the Salon d’Horloge at the Quai d’Orsay by the foreign ministers of the six countries concerned. This treaty, which in several important respects is directly complementary to the German contractual agreements signed yesterday in Bonn, brings to a successful conclusion over a year’s more or less continuous work by experts of the six countries.
M Pleven, then French prime minister suggested the creation of a European army in November 1950, and representatives of the six countries first met in January 1951. When the treaty is ratified, which it is hoped will be before the end of this year, the six Powers will start the fusion of their armed forces into a single army directed by joint supranational institutions.
Reciprocal guarantee
The German Federal Republic will in time begin to recruit and organise its first postwar military units. The European Army so formed will act as an integral unit in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Units of EDC forces will be able to operate under Nato in countries not members of EDC, and reciprocally Nato units composed of non-EDC powers will be able to operate in the EDC countries.
Though unwilling to become a member of the EDC the United Kingdom government has on several occasions pledged itself to the closest possible and most active association with it. Not only are RAF units to cooperate actively and directly with the EDC air forces, but the United Kingdom will undertake training in Britain of EDC military personnel. As a final pledge of British goodwill and support for EDC, Mr Eden today signed the treaty between the United Kingdom and the six members of the EDC in which the United Kingdom, on a reciprocal basis and for so long as she is a member of Nato accepts the obligation to afford “all the military and other aid and assistance in its power” to any EDC member which has been attacked.
Mutual assistance
Another treaty signed at the Qual d’Orsay this afternoon directly relates to the mutual assistance obligations of the six EDC powers and the 14 Nato powers. An attack on any member of one would be regarded by all the members of the other as an attack upon themselves. Since only the Federal German Republic is not a member of Nato the effect of this treaty is to extend the mutual security rights and obligations of Nato to Germany.
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France kills the EDC treaty
From our own correspondent
31 August 1954
By 319 to 264 votes the National Assembly dismissed the European Defence Community treaty from its agenda this evening a procedural vote before the debate had run more than half its course. Thus a treaty, which France originally initiated, has been killed in the least dignified manner possible before most of its defenders had even had the possibility of developing their arguments.
Editorial: The end of the EDC
31 August 1954
The European Defence Community is as near dead as makes no difference.
Somehow the process of binding western European nations together into a harmonious community must be continued, and somehow the United States must be persuaded not to withdraw in dudgeon from its European commitments. The burden on Britain and British leadership will certainly be increased. This is no time for treating Europe as a remote place of little direct concern to Britain: our own fate as much as the future of France and Germany is at stake.
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