Fouchet plans

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The so-called Fouchet plans are two proposals by the French government under Charles de Gaulle for a further development of European integration . It was named after the French diplomat and chief delegate Christian Fouchet , who headed the committee to develop the relevant concept.

The first proposal, which was made public on November 2, 1961, aimed at the establishment of a European Political Union (EPU), with which the member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) should also integrate themselves politically, culturally and in the field of defense policy. He thus followed up on plans for a European Political Community (EPC) that had failed in 1954. The central institution of the EPU should be the Council of Ministers, in which the government representatives of the individual member states would make decisions unanimously. Supranational elements, however, were hardly planned.

Before the other member states had taken a clear position on the French plan, de Gaulle presented a second draft of the Fouchet plan, which he had tightened up. This envisaged the subordination of the existing EEC institutions to the Council of Ministers of the EPU - and thus a far-reaching disempowerment of the EEC Commission , which would de facto have meant the abandonment of the supranational principle of integration. Since this was not acceptable to the other EEC member states, especially the Benelux countries, de Gaulle ultimately provoked the failure of the EPU. De Gaulle's ultimate goal was to enforce his "certaine idée". For De Gaulle, a Europe "above" the states had no future. His goal was to remove all supranational elements from European cooperation. His conception of Europe provided for cooperation between independent states, which retained their full sovereignty and a right of veto in all institutions.

After the failure of the negotiations, the German government under Konrad Adenauer continued to express interest in closer cooperation with France. As the torso of the Fouchet plans , the Franco-German cooperation agreement of January 22, 1963, the so-called Élysée Treaty , came about .

Further political integration stagnated until the end of Charles de Gaulle's term in office. In the meantime, there were further difficulties between France and the other five member states on the question of the UK's admission to the common market (1963 and 1967) and the transition in key areas of the treaty (including agriculture and common commercial policy) foreseen from 1966 under the EEC Treaty Decisions by qualified majority in the Council of Ministers. This resulted in a constitutional crisis in the Community from mid-1965, which was only resolved six months later on January 26, 1966 by the Luxembourg Compromise . It was not until the summit in The Hague in 1969 that the European heads of state and government finally decided to set up a committee that drew up options for European political cooperation (EPC). However, this was only institutionalized in 1986 in the Single European Act ; In 1992 it was further developed in the Maastricht Treaty on the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Fouchet plans at euabc.com, accessed November 24, 2015.
  2. Political Union - 3rd Fouchet Plans (PDF) at europarl.europa.eu, accessed on November 24, 2015.
  3. ^ Oppermann / Classen, Nettesheim: European law. P. 11, para. 17, 4th edition Munich 2009.
  4. De Gaulle and Europa at zeit.de, accessed on November 24, 2015.