Michael Sutton is Professor Emeritus, Modern History and International Relations, at Aston University. He has written regularly on France for The Economist Intelligence Unit - part of The Economist newspaper group - since 1985, and worked in Brussels from 1973 to 1993 monitoring European Community developments. He is also a specialist in twentieth-century French political thought and philosophy.

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 [...]opean 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