Monnet's Conception

The Conservatives succeeded Labour and Churchill replaced Atlee in 1951,there were hopes this party might be more "Europe-minded". But they were no more enthusiastic towards integration. The Churchill government would give its support to Europe but there was no question of Britain taking an active part. Chairman of the Council of Europe,Spaak accessed the Assembly would have to "do without Britain's support in order to make any headway". The third bid for a supranational government was successful.
Monnet believed something "more practical and ambitious" was needed to achieve the desired goal, and an opportunity came in 1950. West Germany had emerged finally as a self-government of Chancellorship. Under its Basic Law passed on 8 May 1949, the new Federal Democratic Republic or FDR, was based on a federation of the eleven highly decentralised Land governments guaranteed by a constitutional court. All international treaties had to be ratified by the Lander through their legislative assembly,the Bundesrat. The largest and most powerful Land, Bavaria, had actually voted against the new constitution, for not reserving even greater power to the Lander.
Economically by this time, the new Germany, under the guidance of Ludwig Erhard, was already showing signs of a remarkable recovery. This raised the question of how the new nation should be assimilated into the western European community. At the Council of Europe in August 1949 Churchill had shocked many delegates by proposing that she should be given the warmest of welcomes. Two of the western occupying powers, the USA and Britain, wanted to see her continue on the road towards full economic recovery and nationhood as soon as possible. But this had provoked a deep rift with France, which wanted to continue exercising control over the German economy, for fear that she might once again become too strong a political and economic rival.
The argument centred on the bone of contention, the coal and steel industries of the Ruhr,heartland of Germany's economy and formerly the arsenal of her war machine. In 1948, France had demanded the setting up of an International Ruhr Authority, which would enable French officials to control Germany's coal and steel production and ensure that a substantial part of that production was diverted to aid French reconstruction. It was a curious echo of France's policy after the First World War. Naturally a new West Germany was bitterly opposed to such an authority. Equally so were the other two occupying powers, America and Britain.
For over two years this dispute had festered, without resolution. But in the spring of 1950 the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson finally lost patience. He issued France with what amounted to an ultimatum. On 11 May there would be a foreign ministers' meeting in London; and unless the French could offer a satisfactory compromise proposal, the USA would impose a solution on all parties.
This gave Monnet the opportunity for which he had been waiting. For years he had dreamed of building a "United States of Europe", beginning by integrating the coal and steel industries, and setting up a supranational authority to run them. This was the idea first put forward in the 1920s, by Coudenhove and Loucheur, and partly implemented by Mayrisch in 1926. It was the idea Monnet himself had outlined to Spaak in 1941 and in his Algiers memorandum in 1943. But what Monnet had in mind was that the coal and steel industries, not just of France and Germany but of other western European countries, should be placed under the direction of a supranational authority: just as over dinner in Paris in 1917 he and Salter had come up with a similar plan for the control of allied shipping.
When Monnet came to put his plan to paper at the end of April,allegedly after two weeks' strenuous walking in the Swiss Alps, he was obviously troubled by how much he dare reveal of its real underlying purpose. Before getting to its final stage, it went through nine separate drafts. In the first, the pooling of coal and steel was regarded as "the first step of a Franco-German Union and a European federation". By the fifth draft, this had been changed to "Europe must be organised on a federal basis. . But , by the final draft, almost all of this was missing. All he would allow himself was a reference to the pool being the "first step of a European federation",a vague term which could mean different things to different people.
Monnet had in mind the creation of a European entity with allthe attributes of a state, the anodyne phrasing was deliberately chosen with a view to making it difficult to dilute by converting it into just another intergovernmental body. It was also couched in this fashion so it would not scare off national governments by emphasising that its purpose was to override their sovereignty.