The Fouchet Plan De Gaulle’s Intergovernmental Design for Europe

The Fouchet Plan
Tactical French retreat
The agreement by the Five on a counter-treaty was a major diplomatic defeat
for France. De Gaulle’s reaction was to fall back on bilateral discussions with
the Germans, in the hope of prising them away, just as he had done with the
British in November. He travelled to Baden-Baden to meet Adenauer on 15
February. Realising that the Chancellor’s room for manoeuvre was now more
limited than in the past, the General reluctantly decided to retreat somewhat
from the second Fouchet Plan text. He agreed in principle that some implicit
reference to NATO could be reinstated, and that this should be stronger than
in the first Fouchet Plan, and he accepted that wording should be found to
safeguard the role of the existing Community system. De Gaulle was not,
however, prepared to offer any ground on the issues of majority voting or
future institutional revision, and invited Adenauer to resile from the countertreaty
of the Five in these respects. The Chancellor said that he could agree to
these changes, whilst stressing that he was not in a position to speak for any
other country and that any Franco-German agreement should not be forced on
the other four states. De Gaulle is reported to have replied that, as nothing
could happen among the Six without Paris and Bonn concurring, once ‘the two
countries are in agreement, … their decision should be imposed’. 51
On 20 March, Community foreign ministers met in Luxembourg to review the
situation. The meeting coincided with the assumption of the chairmanship of
the Fouchet committee by its Italian member, Attilio Cattani, head of the
foreign ministry in Rome. Christian Fouchet had been nominated by de Gaulle
51 Note by De Gaulle of 16 February 1962, contained in the Couve de Murville papers, French
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited in Vanke, op cit, pp107-108. The Franco-German Baden-Baden
package was not discussed at the following meetings of the Fouchet committee, on 20 February
and 15 March, which limited themselves to comparing the second Fouchet Plan with the countertreaty
of the Five, and drafting a synoptic report ‘which explained the points of divergence [both]
between France and the Five and among the Five themselves.’ (Bodenheimer, op cit, p63). This
report, dated 15 March, is reproduced in EP, Towards Political Union, at pp35-39.
42