Phoenix from the Ashes: the Birth of the Western European Union, September 1954 to May 1955

Abstract

On 28 September 1954, the London Nine-Power Conference opened at Lancaster House, with Eden presiding as chairman. But no sooner had the Americans begun to look more positively upon the British solution than the French exhibited renewed doubts, Mendès-France balking at Germany’s admission to NATO and requesting safeguards against a revival of German militarism which were so blatantly discriminatory that they threatened to destroy any hope of agree-ment.¹ The French Prime Minister’s attitude was obviously a disappointment and a worry for Eden and the other European foreign ministers, but it was also predictable. In the ten days since his meeting with Eden in Paris, Mendès-France’s resolve had been visibly weakening. First, his government had gone on record to express dismay at the refusal of the United States to reaffirm its intention to maintain forces on the continent, and to argue that such an undertaking should precede rather than follow a settlement of the crisis. Next, Mendès-France declared that, regardless of his personal views, ‘a solution along the lines of the Eden proposal’ stood ‘no chance of approval by the French Assembly’. Parliamentary opposition remained strongest in regard to the Bonn Republic’s entry to NATO, the very eventuality which the EDC had been devised to avoid.