Common Foreign and Security Policy

Abstract

Since the early 1950s, French governments have viewed the process of European integration as an important means of promoting the country’s foreign policy goals. One of the key motives behind French leaders’ support for the ECSC, for example, was reconciliation with Germany. During the early years of the EC economic integration helped to achieve political stability within Western Europe. However, the development of a security policy for the Six proved to be very difficult and the experience of the failure of the EDG in 1954 (see above, p. 23) demonstrated that states were reluctant to give up their sovereignty in this area. French governments, in particular, did not want their independent, distinctive and, certainly in de Gaulle’s eyes, superior foreign policy subsumed into any form of supranational policy-making body.