In the second half of the twentieth century France played the greatest role - even greater than Germany’s - in shaping what eventually became the European Union. By the early twenty-first century, however, in a hugely transformed Europe, this era had patently come to an end. This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a sixty-year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate’s referendum rejection of the European Union’s constitutional treaty in 2005.

In the second half of the twentieth century France played the greatest role - even greater than Germany’s - in shaping what eventually became the European Union. By the early twenty-first century, however, in a hugely transformed Europe, this era had patently come to an end. This comprehensive history shows how France coupled the pursuit of power and the furtherance of European integration over a sixty-year period, from the close of the Second World War to the hesitation caused by the French electorate’s referendum rejection of the European Union’s constitutional treaty in 2005.

Preface
Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction: De Gaulle’s Shadow

PART I: THE POST-WAR ASSERTION OF LEADERSHIP IN CONTINENTAL WESTERN EUROPE

Chapter 1. Before the Schuman Plan

• Earlier Calls for European Union
• The Quest for Security and the Onset of the Cold War
• Western European Economic and Political Cooperation
• Wariness about the New West Germany

Chapter 2. Pooling Coal and Steel

• The Monnet Initiative
• The Schuman Declaration
• Forging the ECSC Treaty
• Ratification and Implementation

Chapter 3. German Rearmament and Military Security

• The Pleven Plan
• The Rejection of the EDC Treaty
• The Paris Accords
• The Suez Crisis and its Aftermath

Chapter 4. The Gaullist Vision of the Atlantic Alliance and European Union

• Adenauer, the US, and the Berlin Crisis
• The Failure of the Fouchet Committee
• A Rose and a Rose Garden
• ‘Tous Azimuts’ and the Limits of Détente

PART II: THE COMMON MARKET AND THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY

Chapter 5. The Benelux Initiative and the Formation of the Common Market

• Messina to Venice
• Negotiating the EEC and Euratom
• De Gaulle’s ‘Practising the Common Market’
• Securing Agricultural Interests

Chapter 6. Moving from Dirigisme to Qualified Economic Liberalism

• The Watering Down of Post-war Dirigisme
• Delors and the Single Market
• The Reorientation of Foreign Trade
• Globalisation and French Hesitations

PART III: PRESERVING POWER AND SECURITY AFTER DE GAULLE

Chapter 7. European Political Integration up to the Cold War’s Close

• The Rapprochement with Albion
• Echoes of the Fouchet Proposals
• America’s ‘Year of Europe’ and the Atlantic Alliance
• Back to the Elysée Treaty

Chapter 8. Opposition to German Monetary Hegemony

• The Death of the Bretton Woods System
• The Deutsche Mark as Anchor Currency
• The EMS and its Ambivalent Design
• The Dictates of the ERM and French Dissatisfaction

Chapter 9. Geopolitical Upheaval and the Maastricht Treaty

• Monetary Union Proposed from Paris and Bonn
• France and the Fall of the Berlin Wall
• The Drive for German Unification
• Providing a Treaty for European Union

Chapter 10. Post-Yalta and Post-Maastricht Europe

• Implementing EMU and ‘La Pensée Unique’
• The Yugoslav Imbroglio
• Rethinking Security and Defence
• The European Union and the Other Europe

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index