Fouchet Plan
In the so-called Fouchetplänen are two proposals of the French government under Charles de Gaulle for the further development of European integration. It was named after the French diplomat and chief delegate Christian Fouchet, who headed the committee for drawing up the relevant concept.
The first proposal, which was made public on November 2, 1961 aimed at the creation of a European Political Union ( EPU), which requires the Member States of the European Economic Community ( EEC) should also be integrated in the political, cultural and defense policy field. He established order in the plans for a European Political Community (EPC ), which had failed in 1954. The central institution of the EPU should be the Council of Ministers, in which the government representatives of each Member States would take unanimous decisions. Supranational elements were against it hardly provided.
Even before the other Member States had clearly taken a position on the French plan, presented de Gaulle on 18 January 1962 was exacerbated by his second draft of Fouchetplans ago. This foresaw the subordination of existing EEC institutions under the Council of Ministers of the EPU - and thus a high degree of disempowerment of the EEC Commission, which de facto the role of supranational integration principle would have meant. Since this was not acceptable to the other EEC Member States, especially the Benelux countries, de Gaulle provoked ultimately the failure of the EPU. The ultimate aim De Gaulle it was to enforce its " certaine idée ". For De Gaulle Europe "over" the states had no future. His goal was to remove all elements from the supranational European cooperation. His idea of Europe foresaw a collaboration of Independent States, which retain their full sovereignty and the right of veto in all institutions.
After the failure of negotiations, the German government declared under Konrad Adenauer continued interest in closer cooperation with France. As a torso of the Fouchet it came to the conclusion of the German - French Cooperation Treaty of 22 January 1963 called Élysée Treaty.
The further political integration stagnated in the sequence until the end of the term of office of Charles de Gaulle. Meanwhile, there was further trouble between France and the other five Member States in the matter of taking Britain into the Common Market (1963 and 1967 ) and from 1966 provided in accordance with the Treaty transition in key contract areas (including agriculture and the common commercial policy) to make decisions by a qualified majority in the Council of Ministers. This resulted from mid- 1965, a constitutional crisis of the Community, which was only cleaned half a year later on January 26, 1966 by the Luxembourg compromise. Only at the Hague Summit in 1969 adopted the European leaders finally set up a committee of the possibilities of European Political Cooperation (EPC ) designed. However, this was only in 1986 institutionalized in the Single European Act; In 1992, she was further developed in the Maastricht Treaty for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union.