cooperation in Europe. In 1949, it was among the founding states of the Council of Europe, which was, and still is, an intergovernmental organisation. Churchill, for example, said that the Council of Europe was the “instrument of European governments”. On the European continent, on the other hand, a number of statesmen (e.g. Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet) experimented with the idea of a supranational Europe, where states would relinquish their national power. In the early 1950s, the UK excluded itself from supranational cooperation and to a certain extent even tried to sabotage it.

The Eden Plan and administrative organisation

An example of such sabotage is the Eden Plan – the first of the many named after Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary of the time (1951-55), later Prime Minister (1955-57),and also known as one of worst post-war PMs in the UK. The Eden Plan (1952) was an official proposal of the UK’s government that suggested all future European communities such as the European Coal and Steel Community should draw upon the administrative facilities in the Council of Europe. Even though the Eden Plan dealt only with administrative facilities, it was in Europe interpreted as an attempt to water down the European Coal and Steel Community and to dissolve it within the Council of Europe. Jean Monnet, for example, wrote that the suggestions that the Council of Europe would provide administrative facilities “was merely a pretext for the Council of Europe to take over [the ECSC] parliamentary and ministerial institutions.”

In 1952, the Council of Europe was one of