European Defence

Abstract

In the fragmented history of the European Community’s gropings towards federalism defence has played a brief but notable part. The proposal for a European Defence Community (EDC) was put forward by France in 1950, as a centralised and explicity ‘supra-national’ element in a union comprising ‘common institutions, common armed forces and a common budget’. The point was emphasized when Britain refused to join because it was ‘part of the intention of the EDC plan as a whole that it should lead to federation’ and Britain ‘would not feel willing to join in a federation of that kind’.⁽¹⁾ Partly because of this refusal the proposal failed in 1954. With it disappeared a proposal for an equally supra-national political community. Instead of the Defence Community France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the Benelux countries formed Western European Union, which contained a strongly worded mutual defence commitment but no supra-national organization. The defence interests of WEU were almost immediately handed over to the Atlantic Alliance, whose mutual commitment was rather less sharply worded, but to which was later added a defence organisation (NATO) providing for integrated planning in peacetime and integrated command in war. France withdrew from this integrated organization in 1966, but not from the Atlantic Alliance.