Abstract
It has been widely accepted that, after the war, smaller states, and the Benelux Union in particular, were leading proponents of Western European unity. It is also accepted that Belgian governmental decision-making was extremely strongly influenced by the external environment. As a ‘penetrated’ society, transnational and external influences have long been paramount.1 This chapter does not contest these broad assumptions, but rather seeks to examine the roles, attitudes and importance of Belgian officials — administrators and diplomats in particular — towards the creation of European institutions. It takes two examples: the early Benelux phase of integration, and, second, Belgian responses to the Fouchet proposals.
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Notes and References
M. Hirsch, ‘La situation internationale de petits Etats: des systèmes politiques pénétrés. L’exemple des pays du Benelux’, Revue Francaise de Science Politique, vol. 24, no. 5 (1974), pp. 1026–55. Historians, have for the moment, no access to the minutes of the Ministers’ Council, the Comité Ministériel de Coordination Economique (CMCE) and the Comité Economique Interministériel (CEI) for the 1940s and the 1950s, although these institutions played a key role in the decision-making process with regard to Belgian economic and European policy in the postwar period. It is within the CMCE and the CEI that decisions about Benelux, and the Marshall Plan were taken. Moreover, archives from the Ministries of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Finance are not available to researchers, although those administrations influenced decisively the Belgian point of view about European construction. The archives of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are available but very incomplete in this field. Fortunately the archives of the ‘Secrétariat Général de Benelux’ in Brussels are well-preserved, filed and available. In the Dutch public archives, which are very well-preserved, there are many Belgian documents. It is also possible to fill some of the gaps in the Belgian official archives by consulting the many private papers in various archival centres in Belgium, among which the most important are the Archives Générales du Royaume/Algemeen, Rijksarchief (Brussels); the Centre de Recherche et d’Etudes Historiques de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Brussels) and the KADOC (Leuven).
James N. Rosenau, The Scientific Study of Foreign Policy (New-York/London, 1971), pp. 108–9.
Michel Dumoulin, ‘Les debuts de la Ligue européenne de cooperation économique (1946–1949)’, Res Publica (1987), p. 50;
Michel Dumoulin, ‘Les paradoxes de la politique belge en matière de Communauté Politique Européenne (septembre 1952–juin 1954)’, in G. Trausch (ed.), Die europäische Integration vom Schuman-Plan bis zu den Verträgen von Rom. Beiträge des Kolloquiums in Luxemburg 17–19 mai 1989, (Baden-Baden/Milano/Paris/Bruxelles, 1993), pp. 349–63.
J. C. Snoy et d’Oppuers, ‘Paul Van Zeeland, une figure de proue’, Revue Générale, no. 9 (1973) pp. 1–10.
See, for example, J. C. Snoy et d’Oppuers, ‘Economic problems in the long pull ahead’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (September 1946), pp. 155–9.
J. Van Orshoven, ‘Het ministerieel comite voor economische en sociale coordinatie’, Res Publica, vol. 14 (1972), pp. 591–623.
R. Pourvoyeur, ‘De interministeriele economische commissie’, Tijdschrift voor bestuurwetenschappen en publieke recht, vol. 11 (1956), pp. 36–9.
Philippe Schoore, Les Etats de Benelux et la négociation du Traité de la Communauté Européenne du Charbon et de l’Acier (mai 1950–juin 1951), Louvain-La-Neuve, 1988 (UCL, unpublished dissertation).
AGR, Papiers Snoy et d’Oppuers, Camu to Snoy, 20 January 1959, 787, p. 1.
AGR, Papiers Snoy et d’Oppuers, Snoy to Ansiaux, 21 January 1959, p. 747, 1.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Note, 14 September 1960, pp. 2–7.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Van Offelen to Jaspar, 21 January 1960, 2.536, p. 3.
Paul-Henri Spaak, Combats Inachevés, vol. I: De l’espoir aux deceptions (Paris, 1969), pp. 360–1.
Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (henceforth AR), Papiers Stikker, Stikker to Spaak, 22 March 1962, 54, 3.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Jaspar to Wigny, 15 September 1960, 2.539.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Jaspar to Spaak, 19 April 1962, 2.546.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Spaak interview, 20 April 1962, 2.546, p. 2.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Spaak to Jaspar, 20 April 1962, 2.546, p. 1 [‘in coming into a political union, Belgium has two different priorites to preserve: community procedures and the place of Britain as a counter-balance. But the French plans undermine both these two Belgian priorities. Belgium has to achieve at least one of these. So, as the French proposals remove any hope of creating a supranational political union, Belgium wants, at the very least, that Britain should be a member of that union.’]
AR, Papiers Stikker, Note, 1 Febuary 1963, 54, pp. 4–7; AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Jaspar to Spaak, 11 Febuary 1963, 2.547, p. 4.
AGR, Papiers Jaspar, Jaspar to Spaak, 29 March 1963, 2.547, p. 3 [‘There is no place for Britain in a Gaullist Erope. It remains to be seen how de Gaulle hopes to lead a refractory Europe’].
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Grosbois, T., Stelandre, Y. (1995). Belgian Decision-Makers and European Unity, 1945–63. In: Deighton, A. (eds) Building Postwar Europe. S. Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24052-4_8
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