Suchergebnisse

The Council of Ministers of Western European Union (WEU) met on June 16, 1955 in London. The Council gave further consideration to the setting up of the European Commission for the Saar, and the following members were nominated by governments and approved by the Council: M. F. Dehousse (Belgium), P. De Paolis (Italy), M. A. Kunnen (Luxembourg), A. W. C. Bentinck (Netherlands), and George Ren-del (United Kingdom). The first meeting of the European Commission, it was decided, would be held on June 24 in London. The Council also decided that the inaugural meeting of the Assembly of WEU would be held on July 5 in Strasbourg.

The first part of the first session of the Assembly of Western European Union(WEU) was held in Strasbourg from July 5 to 8, 1955. Mr. John Maclay (United Kingdom, National Liberal and Conservative) was elected President of the Assembly by acclamation. Six Vice-Presidents, Mr. Robert Bichet (France, M.R.P.), Mr. Antonio Boggiano Pico (Italy, Christian Democrat), Mr. Georges Bohy (Belgium, Socialist), Mr. J. J. Fens (Netherlands, Popular Catholic), Mr. Gerhard Luetkens (German Federal Republic, Social Democrat), and Mr. Eugene Schaus (Luxembourg, Liberal) were elected, and the Bureau of the WEU Assembly was thus constituted.

On May 6, 1955, the Western European Union (WEU) formally came into existence.1 On May 7, the WEU Council held its inaugural meeting in Paris. The Council considered various questions relating to the structure of WEU and, after approving the Interim Commission's report and adopting the draft agreement on the status of WEU and its staff, appointed Louis Goffin (Belgium) Secretary-General of WEU. Admiral Ferreri (Italy) was appointed director of the Agency for the Control of Armaments. The Council also decided, on the basis of studies carried out by a working group established at the nine-power conference in Paris on October 21, 1954, to create a Standing Armaments Committee composed of national representatives and served by a small secretariat. The Standing Committee had the task of "the development of the closest possible co-operation between member countries of Western European Union in the field of armaments, in order to seek the most practical means of using the resources available to these countries for equipping and supplying their forces and of sharing tasks in the best interest of all". In order to promote liaison with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the seat of the Standing Committee was to be Paris; Charles Cristofini (France) was appointed Assistant Secretary-General in charge of the international secretariat of the Standing Committee. The Council further decided that the first meeting of the WEU Assembly should be held in Strasbourg during die same period as the next session of die Consultative Assembly of die Council of Europe and that the WEU Assembly should be composed of die representatives of the Brussels Treaty powers to the Consultative Assembly.

The second part of the first session of the Assembly of Western European Union (WEU) was held in Strasbourg on October 24 and 28, 1955 under the chairmanship of Mr. John Maclay, President of the Assembly (United Kingdom, National Liberal and Conservative). A draft charter and draft rules of procedure, the chief items on the agenda, were presented to the Assembly on behalf of the Committee on Organization by the rapporteur, Mr. van der Goes van Naters (Netherlands, Socialist), who stated that the method of creating new organizations in Europe had empirical merits, but that there was a danger of inefficient use of Europe's resources as a whole; he felt that the best possible use should be made of parliamentary time; that parliamentarians should not sit on committees that duplicated each other's work; and that no new assemblies should be created without a careful examination of the burdens involved. Mr. van der Goes van Naters declared that collaboration between the ministerial and parliamentary organs of WEU was the keynote of the charter; in order to avoid a clash between the ministers and the Assembly, the charter had been drafted so as to avoid making general rules to govern future and unknown situations and to allow for each case to be treated on its merits as it arose. He stated that with the exception of two provisions where the assent of the Council of Europe must first be sought, the charter contained no provisions on which the Assembly could not decide for itself.

Annual Report:The fifth annual report of the Managing Board of the European Payments Union (EPU) covered the period July I, 1954 to June 30, 1955. The financial year 1954—1955, the report noted, had been one of considerable economic expansion in member countries, although with some variation between them; the progress of the previous year, which had followed upon a period of relative stagnation, had continued and gathered momentum. The report noted that in some countries the rapid expansion had had repercussions both internally and externally which had required corrective measures. During 1954–1955 industrial production had increased greatly, the increase being most marked in base metal manufacturing, metal products and in chemical manufacturing. However, agricultural production of member countries, as a whole, had not changed from the previous year. The report stated that the greater industrial production had been the result of both increased employment and productivity; in a number of countries unemployment had been reduced to new low levels and in certain countries, the number of unfilled vacancies exceeded that of the registered unemployed. Concurrently, and in connection with the rapid economic expansion, salaries and wages had increased in practically all member countries to a much greater extent than in previous years.

The official American policy regarding a United Europe has developed rapidly since the end of World War II and has already gone far toward committing the United States to the establishment of a European Union of some kind. The first important overt act in this development was the declaration of policy in the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948. One purpose of this legislation, Congress declared, was "to encourage these countries [that is, European participants in the Marshall Plan] through a joint organization to exert sustained common efforts as set forth in the report of the Committee on European Economic Cooperation, signed at Paris on September 22, 1947." With this encouragement the Organization for European Economic Cooperation was soon effected. The next step was to extend the area of American interest from the economic to the military field. One of the purposes of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949 was "to achieve international peace and security through the United Nations so that armed force shall not be used except in the common interest." This legislation led eventually to the effort to organize a European Defense Community capable of playing an important role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A further step was the Mutual Security Act of 1951, which declared American policy to be "to further encourage the economic unification and the political federation of Europe." Thus the American government finally became involved in the projected establishment of a constitution for a United States of Europe.

Settlements in EPU for the period May through July 1956 showed the German Federal Republic retaining the strongest creditor position. Austria, which showed a small surplus in June, had a larger one in July, while Italy moved from a substantial deficit in June to a surplus in July. France continued to have the largest monthly deficit; second was the United Kingdom, which showed a surplus in May, a deficit in June and a significantly larger deficit in July. Since December 1955, France had covered its deficits fully in gold payments, but in July 1956 it resorted to the 25 percent EPU credit to which it was entitled. Belgium and Luxembourg retained strong creditor positions.

Monthly statements issued by EPU during the period March 1954–December 1954 indicated that the German Federal Republic retained its position as chief creditor; United Kingdom monthly surpluses, while considerable, were less consistent than those of Germany. France showed a surplus for the month of July 1954, for the first time since June 1952, and by December 1954, had a cumulative surplus since June 30, 1954, of 6.7 million units of account. Settlements with France under the rule that gold paid by France would be recoverable to the extent that it had a net surplus for the period after June 30, 1954, reduced the amount of gold paid by France for deficits beyond its quota to 351.3 million units of account. Surpluses and deficits of other member countries were settled half in gold and half in credit, with the exception of Greece and Turkey, whose balances were settled in gold. As a result of EPU's December operations, its total of gold and convertible assets declined by 5.6 million units, to 422.9 million units.

On January 17, representatives of the seven signatories of the Western European Union (WEU) met in Paris to consider French proposals for the creation of a European arms control agency, commonly called an arms pool. According to press reports, the French plan envisaged the creation of an arms community whose functions would extend to standardization of arms, establishment of programs of production and placing of orders for arms in member countries, carrying into force of the programs, and planning and coordination of investments to develop production. It was understood that no extension of productive capacity could take place within the community without the permission of a central authority and that agreements would be made with the United States and Canada to integrate military aid programs and offshore procurement policies into the over-all program. The new organization would come into operation in two stages: the first, to extend to the end of 1956, would be a transitional stage in which decisions would be taken unanimously by representatives of governments choosing to belong to a military standardization committee and an armaments production committee; in the second stage, from the beginning of 1957, a definitive regime of an arms community would come into action, composed of a director and a permanent committee of ministers of defense under the authority of the WEU Council. Decisions of the permanent body would require the consent of two-thirds of its members, except on questions of standardization which would require unanimity. An alternative to the permanent committee envisaged in the second phase of the program would be the appointment of commissioners, independent of governments, by the WEU Council which would make decisions by a majority vote.

The virtual rejection of the European Defense Community (EDC) treaty by the French National Assembly on August 30, 1954, was followed by a period of intensive high level negotiations, culminating with the signature on October 23 of a series of agreements dealing with 1) restoration of sovereignty to the German Federal Republic, 2) admission of the German Federal Republic to NATO, 3) transformation of the Brussels Treaty Organization (BTO) into a broader political and military alliance and the admission of the German Federal Republic and Italy, and 4) the basis for a German-French agreement on the status of the Saar.