22 May 2007

Marshall Plan Placed Europe on Path Toward Unity

“There must be some agreement among the countries of Europe …”

 

Foreign ministers of the six participating nations -- France, Western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy -- sign the Shuman Plan in Paris April 18, 1951. This led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which in turn led to the Treaty of Rome, which established Europe’s first full customs union -- the European Economic Community. (© AP Images)

Foreign ministers of the six participating nations sign the Shuman Plan in Paris April 18, 1951. (© AP Images)

By Vince Crawley
USINFO Staff Writer

This is the second in a series of articles on the Marshall Plan.

Washington -- The Marshall Plan, announced 60 years ago, set Europe on a path of cooperation that ultimately led to the formation of NATO and the European Union.

Before the United States would donate financial aid, “there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe” about how to spend the money, Secretary of State George C. Marshall said in his historic June 5, 1947, address. He purposely left the details vague, waiting to see what would happen next.

In London, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin listened to the Marshall speech on the BBC and immediately acted. He contacted France’s like-minded foreign minister, Georges Bidault, to discuss how they could organize and lead a European economic conference. “I said to myself at once … ‘It is up to us to tell them what we want,'” Bevin later told the House of Commons. “‘It is up to us to produce a plan.'”

Marshall’s offer for assistance did not take place in a political vacuum. Nine months earlier, in September 1946, Marshall’s predecessor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, delivered the “Speech of Hope” in Stuttgart, Germany. Byrnes promised that the United States would help rebuild a defeated Germany and reintegrate it into the European economy. He also promised a long-term U.S. troop commitment in response to a large Soviet presence in the Soviet occupation zone.

Less than two weeks later, on September 19, 1946, in Zurich, Switzerland, British statesman Winston Churchill spoke of “the re-creation of the European family” in a politically united Europe. The U.S. State Department also viewed European integration as a way to promote economic independence while reducing security threats by making individual countries more reliant on each other.

EUROPE’S RESPONSE TO MARSHALL’S PROPOSAL

Initially, Marshall’s plan included the Soviet Union and the nations of central Europe under Soviet occupation. In late June 1947, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyachaslav Molotov met in Paris with Bevin and Bidault to discuss Marshall’s offer. Soviet goals apparently focused on country-by-country programs, not Europe-wide cooperation, and the Soviets insisted that Germany continue to pay reparations to assist the Soviet economy, which also had been devastated by war. When it was clear that Britain and France would not support these goals, Molotov withdrew from negotiations July 2.

Ten days later, delegates from 16 Western European countries met in Paris to attend the first meeting of the newly formed Committee of European Economic Cooperation (CEEC). The Soviet Union wanted strongly to maintain Eastern European states as a protective zone and refused to allow Czechoslovakia, Poland or others to attend.

“For generations,” Bidault told the CEEC delegates, “men of all countries who rejected a selfish nationalism have longed for this assembly which is being held here today. Let us be proud to be witness to it, and to be good craftsmen of a task dreamed of for centuries and, at the present time, urgently necessary.”

The CEEC spent six weeks developing a detailed list of economic projects. U.S. officials rejected the proposals, saying they represented “16 separate shopping lists” rather than a coherent plan. A few weeks later, the CEEC sent the United States a revised report that met U.S. requirements. The report’s introduction said it represented a new stage of European economic cooperation. The report included highly detailed assessments of the European economy at a time when production capabilities were often considered to be national secrets. This requirement for financial transparency was one of the reasons the Soviet Union declined to participate.

In response to the CEEC, the Soviet Union in September 1947 organized the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) to coordinate economic policy in Eastern Europe, while trying to undermine Western support for the Marshall Plan. Historians consider this Soviet strategy a major miscalculation. Soviet participation almost certainly would have led the U.S. Congress to withhold Marshall Plan funds.

Instead, the Marshall Plan’s requirement for economic cooperation set in motion a series of events and policy decisions that evolved into the modern institutions of European stability and cooperation.

In March 1948, Britain, France and the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) signed a treaty to establish a military pact, aimed at collective defense as well as fostering cultural and economic integration. However, they sought more U.S. involvement, and the negotiations led, in April 1949, to the founding of NATO, which continues to integrate the defense of its democratic member nations.

In May 1950, former French Prime Minister Robert Schuman proposed joint management of France's and West Germany's coal and steel industries. The “Shuman Plan” led in 1951 to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community by West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries. This led, in 1957, to the Treaty of Rome, which established Europe’s first full customs union -- the European Economic Community – which is considered the founding organization of the modern European Union (EU).

On the 60th anniversary of Marshall’s speech, the EU encompassed 27 nations and 500 million people, with a combined gross domestic product of $14 trillion, exceeding the GDP of the United States.

For additional information, see “Marshall Plan for Rebuilding Europe Still Echoes After 60 Years.”