Why did de Gaulle veto the United Kingdom's accession to the European Economic Community in 1963? This article addresses the interlinked struggles over British accession and European political union in the early 1960s. The focus is on the crucially conflicting relations between de Gaulle and the Netherlands, his main opponent on both issues. Who won the Franco-Dutch battle and why? This article assesses these questions on the basis of new multi-archival material and highlights a hitherto largely unnoticed rhetorical battle, which explains the course of events and reveals a previously largely unnoticed logic behind de Gaulle's manoeuvring in the intertwined negotiations over European political union, the Common Agricultural Policy and the UK membership bid.

Charles de Gaulle has cast a long shadow over French political history and history writing. In exploring the French response to the United States' 1973 ‘Year of Europe’ initiative, this article challenges the dominant scholarly paradigm, which emphasises continuity between the 1960s and the 1970s. Drawing on a wide range of French and US archives, it demonstrates that renewed concerns about US power spurred the French elites both to reappraise the value of collective European action in foreign policy and to foster a pioneering concept: a politically anchored – as opposed to a geographically circumscribed – ‘European identity’.