The ‘European Policy’ of France

Abstract

T tHE formation of the United States of Europe is an ancient ideal that in the last four centuries has been more actively followed up in France than in any other country. It is curious to note that the first of these attempts, such as the 'Grand Design' of Henry IV or the project presented to Louis XV by the Abbe St Pierre, have some of the same features of the most recent plans put forth by the French Government. These illustrious pioneers already foresaw the European Assembly, a common defence with a single General Staff, a common budget financed by contributions from all the States to meet the expenditures of the great alliance, and a court of arbitration. Napoleon himself recognized in his will that he was not able 'to subdue Europe by violence'. He added, 'Today we have to convince her [Europe] by ideas' and he counselled his heir to 'unite Europe by indissoluble federal ties'. The same thought continued to haunt the French mind in the nineteenth century. It formed the basis between the two world wars of the famous memorandum on the Organization System of a European Federal Union drawn up by Aristide Briand, then France's Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, the most recent efforts of the French Government-the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Defence Community-differ in one essential point from all previous attempts in the same direction: for the first time France has suggested that a certain amount of sovereignty be transferred to a supra-national authority, the high authority or commissariat. A re-reading of what Briand wrote in his Despatch to His Majesty's Government, enclosing his I930 Memorandum, brings out the importance and the audacity of our propositions: ... in no case and in no degree may the formation of the federal union desired by the European Governments affect in any way any of the sovereign rights of the States which are members of such an association. It is on the plane of absolute sovereignty and of entire political independence that the understanding between European nations must be brought about.1 The French Memorandum of I930 was never followed up, but if it had been, it probably would not have led to a real European federation, because in the recommended institutions, each State would have kept all of its sovereign rights which could have been used to veto any decision and thus paralyse the system. It is by eliminating the rule of unanimity in the European councils and in confiding certain well-defined responsibilities to a higher organism that the French Government has really made an innovation. 1 London, H.M.S.O., Cmd. 3595, pp. 9-II.