The before and after of Brexit: Britain and the Schuman plan (pdf)
Andrew Duff, EU3D Insights, 30 March 2023
On 2 June 1950, the British cabinet decided not to accept the invitation from France to join talks on the Schuman Plan that were soon to lead to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). This non-event and its consequences have fascinated historians.
Few have differed from the judgement that Britain’s abstention from this early manifestation of European integration set the country’s course as an outsider in Europe.
In 2016, the British took another fateful decision, which was to secede from the European Union after nearly half a century of membership. While much has changed in the intervening decades, the terrain seems oddly familiar. Britain struggles today to settle its relationship with a Europe that itself still struggles for unity. Stay out? Rejoin? Associate? Or look for some new form of affiliation short of full membership? At any rate, the leaders of the European Union are hoping that they will not continue to be plagued, as their predecessors were, by a simmering British problem.
For this insight, Andrew Duff has returned to official cabinet papers for the period 1949-52 housed in the National Archives at Kew as well as the memoirs of Jean Monnet, Harold Macmillan and Dean Acheson to recount the history of the early years of European integration. This insight may interest those unfamiliar with the history of those early years and bring perspective to those who yet obsess about Brexit.
About the author
Andrew Duff is a member of the EU3D’s Advisory Board and a Senior Fellow of the European Policy Centre. He is a former Member of the European Parliament, President of the Spinelli Group, President of the Union of European Federalists and Director of the Federal Trust.
