Enlisting Monnet? The German Trade Unions, Monnet’s Action Committee and the Negotiations for the 1957 Rome Treaties

This article traces the relationship of the German trade unions with Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for the United States of Europe, centring on the negotiations for the 1957 Rome Treaties. The challenge presented by the Messina relance encouraged the union leaders to support the Committee, hoping to build on the relationship they had developed with Monnet in the ECSC. However, they failed to develop an agenda to make use of the Committee and when disappointed by the outcome of the negotiations for the Rome Treaties, which they saw as a major setback for union demands, they lost interest in it, a process which was eased by the Committee’s decline in relevance during the 1960s. Nevertheless, despite their failure to achieve their original objectives, membership of the Committee was important in socialising German elites, including union leaders, back into European political life after the war.