French Business Leaders Look at EDC: A Preliminary Report.

The postwar career of the European Idea is marked by three events. It was launched in 1947 when the European recovery program that has been institutionalized in the 18-nation Organization for European Economic Cooperation was initialized. It passed a major milestone in 1950, with ratification of the Schuman Plan instituting a continental six-nation Coal and Steel Community (CSC). It suffered a dramatic setback in 1954, when the French Assembly rejected the Pleven Plan to institute a parallel European Defense Community (EDC). In this sequence, the course of events is plainer than their cause. Especially resistant to explanation is the great shift in the French Assembly between 1950 and 1954, between the ratification of CSC and the rejection of EDC. The inadequacy of current explanations for this major event was noted by many French scholars, who undertook a critical analysis of the prevailing hypotheses as the first step in an empirical study of EDC's defeat made by the Institut d'Etudes Européennes.