Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Western Europe and Canada, Volume VI, Part 1

740.00/3–553: Telegram

No. 158
The United States Representative to the European Coal and Steel Community (Bruce) to the Department of State¹

confidential

Paris, March 5, 1953—5 p.m.

Coled 25. Subject is European political community. Reference Department telegrams 4582 February 24² and Edcol 2, March 2.³

1. Governments will insist on having full opportunity to discuss and to make changes in EPC draft treaty. Problem after March 10 will be to provide framework within which parliamentarians would continue to play important role. Participation by parliamentarians would help momentum for both EDC treaty and EPC treaty and enable EPC treaty to be submitted for ratification to national parliaments as “legislators document” and not merely “experts draft” or “diplomatic treaty”. Danger is that governments will put treaty on ice and resist participation by members of ad hoc assembly. Result would be feeling of letdown and much bitterness. As Adenauer pointed out at Rome parliamentarians have worked long and hard over six month period and their product should not be treated casually.

2. Draft treaty which constitutional committee has submitted to ad hoc assembly appears to be acceptable vehicle as next step in unification process. We cannot expect a complete and balanced European constitution at this time. Most serious weakness is large difference in size between constituencies which will elect members of Lower House in Benelux countries and those in larger countries.

3. Reference paragraph 4, your telegram 4583 [4582], draft treaty contains more supranational features than governments are likely to accept. Beginning with ad hoc assembly directives of last January, process of debate and redrafting in working group subcommittees and constitutional committee has led to modification most of objectionable features earlier versions stressed in Luxembourg’s telegram 133 January 2 repeated Paris 61.⁴

European Executive Council, for example, has been considerably strengthened in relation Council of National Ministers. Under present formulation Council of National Ministers exercises powers only in cases specified in CSC, EDC and EPC treaties, and no longer has general supervisory functions regarding executive council. Nor does draft treaty water down supranational concepts now embodied in CSC and EDC treaties, although it does heighten responsibility of executive to parliament.

4. Should treaty as it emerges from ad hoc assembly and subsequent negotiations between governments contain serious flaws, we would have adequate opportunity to express views if we wished to do so. I see no immediate need for us to inject ourselves into actual negotiations. I doubt whether we should stress need to broaden areas of competence immediately. Experience with two recent Dutch memoranda, taken together, provides example that in present context widening community competency likely to mean weakening supranational features of its central institutions. In name of “Europe” two Dutch memoranda⁵ propose little more than six-nation OEEC.⁶

Bruce

1. Repeated to London, Rome, Brussels, The Hague, Luxembourg, and Bonn.
2. See footnote 3, Supra.
3. Supra.
4. Not printed; it summarized Tomlinson’s analysis of the “grave weaknesses” in both substance and form of the draft treaty for the European Political Community. (740.00/1–253)
5. Presumably a reference to the Dutch memoranda of Dec. 11, 1952 and Feb. 14, 1953. For information concerning both of these memoranda, see Document 154.
6. In telegram Edcol 10 to Paris, Mar. 6, the Department of State noted its agreement, especially with the sentence in paragraph 4 concerning the lack of an immediate need for U.S. participation in the actual negotiations concerning the treaty for a European Political Community. (740.00/3–553)