The Aftermath of the 1955 Referendum

THE RESULTS OF THE 1955 REFERENDUM meant the end of Gilbert Grandval and Johannes Hoffmann's project to transform the Saar into an independent nation closely associated with France. Following the referendum, the French government sensibly concluded that the only solution to the Saar question was its return to West Germany. French political elites in the early 1950s had worried about the impact that the loss of the Franco-Saar economic union would have on the balance of power within the ECSC. Nevertheless, the demise of the EDC in 1954, the subsequent abandonment of the European Political Community, the more modest, economic approach toward European integration taken at Messina in 1955, and France's decreased demand for coal and steel had all dramatically changed the French government's need to maintain the union. Moreover, with European integration taking a direction less likely to restrict national sovereignty, with West Germany a member of NATO, and especially with the probability that militaristic German nationalism would not be revived, France had little to fear from the Saar's return to West Germany. By the fall of 1955, therefore, the region was simply not as strategically valuable to France as it had been in the past. The French government had little to gain in opposing the will of the Saar people as expressed in the referendum on Europeanization and had no alternative to returning the territory to West Germany.

Politically, the end of the Saar dispute was a landmark in Franco- German relations. The Saar's reincorporation into West Germany marked the end of disagreements over Germany's western borders and removed the greatest source of contention between France and West Germany since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949. This in turn helped create the atmosphere that facilitated the cooperative path that European integration and Franco-German relations took in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the end, the establishment of the EEC in 1957 and the signature of the Franco-German Friendship Treaty in 1963 were in part the fruit of the amicable resolution of the Saar's status.

While the eclipse of the Saar dispute had political benefits, it also had economic rewards for France. The 1956 settlement that France and West Germany reached on the Saar generously compensated France for the territory.