Did Winston Churchill Really Follow The EDC?

Conservative government of Winston Churchill came into office again during the negotiations on EDC. Churchill did not follow the EDC because that would threaten the British sovereignty directly. On 28 November 1951, the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, said that Britain would not participate in the EDC in a NATO Council meeting in Rome. Specifically, Eden strongly believed that the Pleven Plan would fail because the cost of joining in the EDC for potential states was considerable. Meanwhile, there was also opposition to the EDC from civil servants, who thought Britain would get in trouble with merging its armed forces into a European army and would surrender British sovereignty to European authority (Stephen, 1991, p. 40-41).
On 30 August 1954, the European Defense Community was not ratified by the French Parliament, the EDC had to collapse, which was regarded as a setback of the
European integration.
After the failure of the EDC, on the one hand, Jean Monnet suggested that atomic energy of the members of ECSC should be considered as next sector for integration in 1955. At the same time, the Benelux countries suggested to build a general common market that abolished tariff barriers in trade between members. On the other hand, a conference with historical significance was held from 1 to 3 June 1995 at Messina, Italy, which called the Messina Negotiation. Specifically, the six foreign ministers of the European Coal and Steel Community member states participated in this meeting. Because of the failure of the EDC, the six members of ECSC in this conference turned their attention to discuss the possibility of creating a customs union, which was to form the common external tariff and abolish internal tariff between members. Actually, the British government sent a representative the Messina conference. However, there was just a civil servant represented Britain, while six members sent their senior political officers. On 7 December 1955, Britain issued a brief statement that Britain would not join in the Customs Union. Obviously, Britain underestimated the importance of the Messina negotiation firstly. Then, Britain quitted the Customs Union because the Conservative government of Eden concerned that there were still some kinds of supranationalism in Customs Union, and which would threaten its relations with the Commonwealth. These were proved as the biggest strategic mistakes because Britain lost its position and chance to embed British preference into European integration.
Meanwhile, in December 1955, Britain thought that the Organization for European Economic Cooperation was the better stage for West European countries for intergovernmental cooperation than the Customs Union.
However, the six member states of the ECSC did not agree with Britain. Indeed, Britain sought to get the United States’ support to promote the intergovernmental cooperation under the framework of the OEEC rather than the Customs Union when the Eden visited President Eisenhower in Washington. Yet, the United States supported the Messina initiative and Britain had to find other methods to address their concerns about the Customs Union.
In July 1956, Britain proposed a program to establish a regional free trade area, which included all the member states of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. However, this plan was not widely accepted by six members of the ECSC. Take France as an example, the French government deemed this plan as a British political tactic, in order to sabotage the Messina initiative and regain the intergovernmental cooperation within the
OEEC.
On 25 March 1957, the six member states of the European Coal and Steel Community signed the Treaty of Rome in Rome, Italy. And the Rome treaty came into force on 1 January 1958 with establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC) and European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), which were much more ambitious and comprehensive than ECSC in terms of the West European cooperation. Especially for the EEC, which provided for the development of a common market for industrial and agricultural products, for the free movement of capital and labor within the territories of duties between member states, for the creation of a common set of customs duties for the import of goods from outside world (Bude, 2013).
In a word, the establishment of the European Economic Community was the significant step in the history of the European integration.