Abstract

The failure so-called "Fouchet plans" for a political union of the EEC countries of the early 1960s provides an interesting example for the core issues of an effective European unification in the field of foreign and security policy. Based on a French proposal, the project aimed at a dense cooperation of France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries in order to create a union of sovereign states that, according the De Gaulle's view, should be able to maintain Europe's voice in world politics as an equal, autonomous partner for the superpowers USA and USSR. The planned union's structures were very similar to those of the EC's European Political Cooperation and the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy established in the early 1970s and 1990s, respectively. The reasons for the plans´ failure were massive conflicts among the EEC member countries about (1) the actual global role of the union and its relations to the United States and NATO, (2) the inclusion of the United Kingdom, (3) the supranational or intergouvernmental structure of the union, (4) and its future relationship to the existing European Communities. Thus, in a way, the Fouchet project demonstrated the fundamental problems of a common European foreign policy still unsolved today as early as almost 50 years ago.