Extracts from a confidential report from Thomas J. Kiernan
to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
'German Attitude to European Integration'
(D/10) (Confidential)

1. The European Idea, European integration, a United States of Europe, are terms of long-term political thinking. To translate them into the practical short-term stages is to think in terms of the Council of Europe, the OEEC, the European Coal and Steel Community, Euratom and the Common Market; and, more cautiously, of the new-look NATO as a political-economic-social community framing the defensive military alliance.
2. The official German attitude is based primarily on the strong personal attachment of both the Chancellor and the Foreign Minister to the ultimate aim of European integration. (There may be, and probably is, a basic belief that in such a Europe, Germany would be primus inter pares and that her primacy would be pronounced). It is recognised that it is a matter of long-term striving and that all existing organisations have their part to play towards achieving a federalised Europe, preserving the Western-civilisation values. The Chancellor and his Foreign Minister have, however, inspired in official circles an enthusiasm and a faith in the current developments towards a European community.

[matter omitted]

4. The official German attitude is strongly in favour of a successful outcome of the Euratom and Common Market schemes. These, like the purposes of the European Coal and Steel Community, are practical propositions where one can see the result of efforts with a minimum of resolutions; and the appeal to the practical German mind is immediate and practical whereas there is no attraction, particularly after the hypnotism of phrases during the Hitler régime, for much of the oratory from Strasbourg. Also, the Action Group of M. Monnet² has the support of the German trade unions and of the Socialist Party. The political thinking in Western Germany on the subject of European integration is concerned almost wholly with Euratom.
5. It will be recollected that, following the Messina directive³ and the Brussels meeting, it was proposed, in the Euratom scheme, that the nuclear material resources of the six ECSC countries should be subjected, for purposes of application and control, to a European Supra-National Authority, virtually amounting to the formation of an international monopoly of the countries concerned. Britain is taken to be, for Commonwealth and other reasons, cool to European integration; and the formation of Euratom would bring into existence a balancing power outside the two great atomic powers, USA and USSR. This kind of supra-national atomic power organisation, on the lines of the European Coal and Steel Community, is favoured by Adenauer and von Brentano.
6. At the same time, OEEC published in Paris its plan for the control of the peaceful applications of atomic power. The character and structure of the OEEC itself necessarily limited this plan to one of international co-operation within the framework of OEEC, and with the support of Britain. (A particular objection of Britain to Euratom is because Britain counts on atomic reactors as a major heavy goods export in the future and does not want the Continental nations to compete for overseas atomic reactor orders as a unified group). It seems from M. Mayer’s⁴ visit to Washington last February that the United States favours the supra-national type of organisation, as part of the European integration movement and because it would prevent national development of atomic weapons; and regards it as a step towards a common economic market.
7. Speaking to Professor Caspari⁵ of the Foreign Office in Bonn just before he left with Dr. von Brentano for the talks in London this week, I obtained confirmation that within the Cabinet there is some difference of opinion in regard to the Chancellor’s support of the Little Europe⁶ group. It is clear that the Chancellor’s support of the six countries’ plans for economic integration is only part of his general policy for Western European unity against the Soviets and Communism. The difference of opinion is concerned mainly with the possible dangers to sections of German economic interests, particularly in the Euratom project which could place France in a specially advantageous position to the detriment of the Ruhr industrialists.
8. The financially interested Ruhr industrialists fear that while all German inventions in the applied nuclear research field would have to be shared with a Euratom High Authority, the French could withhold their inventions on the ground that they were of military significance. Germany, not being permitted to produce atomic weapons, could not use this argument; yet German scientists are receiving considerable support from the Ruhr industrialists and are said to have achieved important results in nuclear research and to be now looking for other fissionable materials and to have made important progress in this direction. Within the Government, the Minister for Atomic Affairs, Franz Josef Strauss,⁷ and the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Bluecher,⁸ have been fighting the Ruhr battle. It was mainly because of the strength of the opposing interests involved that the Federal Government, while endorsing Euratom, decided to link it with the establishment of the first stage of a joint European market; so that, in effect, the creation of another supra-national authority to control industrial atomic uses will depend on the simultaneous establishment of the embryonic common market.
9. This will, it is understood, be the line taken by the Foreign Minister when the report of the committee presided over by M. Spaak, which has been meeting at Brussels since July 1955, comes before the Foreign Ministers of the six countries. The meeting will be held in Paris or Italy on May 29th. The part of the Spaak report which deals with the Common Market aims at a realisation of this development in three stages of four years each.

   [matter omitted]

   Professor Caspari did not seem to have any doubt of some material progress along the lines of the six countries’ deliberations; if anything the German officials working on the subject were over-enthusiastic, under the inspiration of the Chancellor who fears that another failure, especially in view of the dangers inherent in the new Soviet policies, would mean the end of all hope of European co-operation. He understood that our trading difficulties were due mainly to our prices being too high, our transport methods not altogether economic, and our traders not exerting any pressure to enter the German markets. He promised to go further with the officials concerned (in the Ministries of Agriculture and Economics) into some detailed matters relating to Irish trade with Germany which I took occasion to mention. His general line was that things are moving in the European integration field and that there should be co-operation between the existing bodies and this applied particularly to OEEC and the committees studying Euratom and the common market.

12. An Irish official attitude may be discerned from the minutes of a meeting of the Foreign Trade Committee held on 27th January 1956.

    ‘Mr. Breathnach stated that the Department of Agriculture had been giving some consideration to the position created by the proposals of the six European countries comprising the European Coal and Steel Community (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) following their meeting at Messina in June last to establish a more highly integrated block within OEEC … If the political and economic integration of these six countries were to develop, it might have reactions in the long term on the trading relations between this country and Britain.

    The Department of External Affairs representatives were of opinion that, on general grounds, it was desirable that this country should continue to co-operate with OEEC and to endeavour to prevent the organisation from breaking up into splinter groups.’

13. It may be worth considering whether we cannot aim at reconciling our de facto position, as governed by economic factors, with a longer-term policy of wider co-operation, in the interests of European integration, with the broad ideological purposes of which we must agree. The best way to avoid fragmentation (and it is worth noticing that the Soviet favours the OEEC plan of co-operation on atomic research) is to broaden co-operation with the small successful practical organisations, such as the ECSC, and not to stand completely apart from them. This issue may arise with further developments of the ‘Messina’ group towards stages of economic integration.