Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Germany and Austria, Volume VII, Part 2

110.11 DU/5–454: Telegram

No. 681
The Ambassador in France (Dillon) to the Department of State¹

secret
priority

Paris, May 4, 1954—3 p.m.

4192. In accordance with Dulte 44² (which I am repeating to London) Hallstein called on me last night after he had seen Maurice Schumann. He told me he was making the call to reestablish a procedure which had proved useful during the negotiation of the Schuman Plan. He remained for an hour and a half and discussed in detail the written proposal which he had given Maurice Schumann. English translation prepared by German FonOff is identical with that in Dulte 44. Official German language version being sent to Dept today by despatch.³

Hallstein said that meeting with Schumann had consisted of himself, his interpreter, and Maurice Schumann. He said the meeting had gone better than he had hoped and that Schumann seemed in a far more flexible mood than he had ever seen him previously. I remarked that it was my understanding that this change of mood dated from the meeting Hallstein and Ophuels had had alone with Maurice Schumann at the end of his previous visit here.⁴ Hallstein agreed that in retrospect that meeting had been more significant than he had realized at the time. His difficulty at the time had been that the conversation with Schumann at Versailles had been very general and had lasted over a very long period of time, so that he had found himself unable to draw any precise conclusions from it. Therefore, after consultation with Adenauer, they had decided the time had come to present a specific proposal.

Hallstein said that Adenauer felt that negotiations had gone too far into questions of detail and that an agreement in principle should be made very short and as general as possible. The present German note is the result and it takes into account the limitations imposed on Adenauer by the recent foreign affairs debate in the Bundestag.

Hallstein said that Schumann and he had discussed the proposal in some detail and that Schumann had then said he would require some time to think the matter over, after which they would have another meeting which could take place either the latter part of this week or early next week. Hallstein said the Germans were very anxious to settle the Saar question prior to the May 18 date set by the French Cabinet. He pointed out that there were 5 Laender elections coming up this year in Germany and that the first and most important would take place in North Rhine Westphalia in the latter part of June, approximately June 25 or 26. He said that Adenauer’s foreign policy would inevitably be the central issue of this campaign and that if there had been real progress on EDC in French Parliament Adenauer was assured of an overwhelming victory. However, in the event there was no progress, things might go badly and it might even be possible that a new Laender government would be formed by a Socialist-Liberal coalition, which would end Adenauer’s present two-thirds majority in the Bundesrat. This, Hallstein said, would be a calamity and therefore the Germans were now pressing for a rapid settlement of the Saar problem so that the French debate on EDC could get under way promptly.

Hallstein said that he felt it would be necessary for Adenauer and Bidault to have another meeting in order to arrive at a final solution. However, he hoped to be able to work out with Maurice Schumann a text containing agreed paragraphs and German and French versions of disagreed paragraphs. Such a text could be used by Bidault and Adenauer in their final negotiations. He said he was sure that Adenauer would be willing to ask Bidault for another meeting. I told Hallstein that I felt that in the situation he described, Bidault would accept such an invitation.

Hallstein also said that he felt that US and UK intervention might be needed to arrive at a settlement. I asked him what form he thought this intervention should take and he said that what he meant by intervention was primarily a solemn request by the US and the UK Govts to France and the FedRep to arrive at a prompt solution of the Saar problem. He thought it would be difficult for such intervention to go very far into the details of the proposed settlement. He also said that the next session of the Council of Ministers of the Council of Europe was due to take place on May 18. For the first time Adenauer would be in the chair at this meeting. Hallstein thought that this meeting could be used in some fashion, how he was not yet quite clear, to create an atmosphere which would tend to force prompt agreement between France and Germany along the general lines of the Van Naters Report.⁵

Hallstein then went into a detailed discussion of the new German proposal stressing three important points.

The first point was the statement that the Saar statute should be based on the proposal of the General Affairs Commission of the Council of Europe. He said that it was obviously not possible to follow the proposal in complete detail, but that it should be publicly taken as a point of departure for the Franco-German agreement, and should be adhered to wherever possible. This procedure would make it easier to obtain the approval of the Bundestag for the eventual settlement.

The second important point was the content of paragraphs 1 and 2 of the German proposal. He said that the Chancellor’s position on this point was inflexible and that on this one subject he was under far more rigid instructions than usual. If a Saar settlement was to be ratified by the Bundestag, Hallstein said it was absolutely essential that it contain the statement that the Saar would only become European territory after the European political community came into existence. He then said that he realized that this ran counter to a basic French requirement that the solution be definitive and not subject to reopening in the event of delay in creation of EPC. In an attempt to get around this problem, paragraph 9 had been drafted. It should be read in conjunction with paragraphs 1 and 2.

Hallstein confirmed to me, as he had during morning to officer of Bruce Mission, that it would be perfectly proper for the French to claim in their Parliament that the interim settlement, as outlined in para 9, was in effect permanent. He said that he had gone as far as he could to indicate this to Maurice Schumann and that he hoped that Maurice Schumann had understood his idea. He said that the Germans had proposed that the Saar Commissioner be a member of the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community and be responsible to that community’s Common Assembly because the High Authority was far more of a European supranational body than the Council of Europe. It would be easier to sell such an interim position to the Bundestag than one which put the commissioner under the Council of Europe, as provided in the Van Naters Report. He said he had not consulted with Monnet⁶ about his proposal but no doubt Monnet and the High Authority would be opposed to it as further complicating their present assignment.

The third problem of importance, Hallstein said, was the economic question covered in paragraph 5. He said the wording of paragraph 5 had been arrived at to minimize as much as possible the important concessions being made by Germany to France. I told him that I felt the French had real concern and fear of the possibility of German goods coming into France through the Saar free of duty. Hallstein said that Germany had no desire to accomplish such an end and would agree to adequate controls, and he mentioned provisions for labelling goods, as one possible form of control. I told him that as a matter of principle I thought it would be very difficult for him to obtain acquiescence in any system of controls that would require the establishment of a customs organization on the Franco-Saar border.

I then asked him if he was prepared to accept the principle of quotas as a method of control for German-Saar trade. Hallstein at first demurred somewhat from this type of control, saying that his experience in negotiations of this sort with the French was difficult, that he thought it would be almost impossible to arrive at a mutual agreement on what the quotas should be.

I then inquired as to whether it might not be possible, in the event of disagreement lasting beyond a certain period of time, say 3 to 6 months, to refer the problem for decision to some neutral body, such as the Coal and Steel Authority. Hallstein said that he had given some thought to such a possibility and that he thought it might be practicable and that it certainly was worthy of consideration. He then went on to say that in practice Germany had very little interest in trade with the Saar per se. He said the population of the Saar was only nine hundred thousand, the same size as the city of Frankfurt, and such a market was not worth quarreling about. However, it was of the utmost importance for political reasons that the economic settlement be presented as a truly European one that would not appear to discriminate against Germany. He then said that he now had a feeling that the economic problem was capable of solution and he emphasized that he thought the real difficulty remaining in the way of a solution was the necessity for a tie-in to the European Political Community in the fashion mentioned in paragraph 1 of the German proposal, rather than the fashion to which Maurice Schumann had agreed in his earlier conversation. (See Embtel 4011.⁷)

Comment: It seems to me that the Saar problem has now reached a point where it is primarily a question of drafting an agreement that will be satisfactory at the same time to the Bundestag and the French National Assembly. I do not feel that the wording of the new German proposal will be satisfactory to the French, as I feel that they will require wording that will spell out in greater detail the permanence of the “interim solution” envisaged in paragraph 9, and that they also will require a clearer statement of their economic gains, such as the maintenance of the currency and customs union with France. It appears that both the French and the Germans now desire to draw up an agreement which will give clear cut satisfaction to their own requirements but which can only be quoted by the other part as giving inferential approval to the other side’s needs.

Looking at it this way the problem would seem to be more one of drafting than one of substance but I do not mean to indicate that this means that a solution is easy or is in sight. It still appears very difficult to draw up a piece of paper that can be interpreted in different ways in the Bundestag and the French Parliament. Contrary to the statement by Blankenhorn in Dulte 44, I did not get the impression from Hallstein that the German paper represented the “ultimate extent” to which Germany could go on the Saar. The one exception to this was the thought in the first two paragraphs dealing with the European Political Community. On this Hallstein repeated time and again that there was no room for retreat or compromise. Specifically it is my feeling that Hallstein would be prepared, if necessary, to abandon his suggestion of putting the European commissioner under the High Authority rather than under the Council of Europe. I also feel that he expects to have to agree to stronger language from the French point of view in paragraph 5 on the economic question.

I am informing British Embassy here of my talk with Hallstein and giving them a copy of the German proposal. It appears to me that Schumann’s proposals to Hallstein contained in Embtel 4011 and the present German paper completely outdate the language of the proposed UK–US representations.⁸ In particular, it would not seem appropriate any longer to refer to paragraphs in Schumann’s paper of March 9,⁹ which are now no longer at issue. If US and UK are to make representations in the near future I would think that prompt reexamination of the wording of such representations is necessary. I am seeing Schumann either later today or tomorrow to receive his report.¹⁰

Dillon

1. Repeated to Bonn and London.
2. Supra.
3. Despatch 2795 from Paris, May 4. (762.022/5–454)
4. Regarding this meeting, see telegram 4011, Document 678.
5. See Document 640.
6. Jean Monnet, President of the European Coal and Steel Community.
7. Document 678.
8. Presumably a reference to the representations in a brief, dated May 1, 1954, agreed by a U.K.–U.S. working group which evolved from the coordination referred to in telegram 4985, Document 677. A copy of this brief is in file 762.022/5–154.
9. See footnote 3, Document 667.
10. For a report on Dillon’s meeting with Schumann, see telegram 4224, infra.