Europe and the Saar
Beside the monstrous chaos that threatens the Government of France, the question of the Saar may seem insignificant. But, in European terms, the visit of Professor Hallstein to Paris on Monday to seek a basis on which Dr. Adenauer and M. Bidault can again discuss the Saar is a matter of some importance. A settlement for the Saar is the third of the conditions laid down by the French Assembly last Autumn before it would consider ratifying the European Army treaty. Furthermore, in an emotional if not in a formal sense, the Saar question is a powerful factor in the fate of the whole European movement, partly because the Saar is the main out- standing issue between Germany and France, a symbol of their mutual distrust; partly because the form of settlement envisaged was to provide the first example of "Europe " in action. It is, therefore, melancholy to report that a solution for the Saar is not in sight. On one level, there are the differences on which Dr. Adenauer and M. Bidault found it impossible to progress at their last meeting in March. On the political side, the two statesmen had agreed in principle to something like the Council of Europe (van Naters) Plan for Europeanisation. They had failed to agree on the economic side, since France refused to contemplate even a progressive loosening of the economic union between the Saar and France, while Dr. Adenauer (and Mr. van Naters) envisaged a slowly widening market for Germany. On another level, there is the fact,, underlined by last week's agitated debate in the Bundestag that there is no unanimous support in Germany (or for that matter, in. Dr. Adenauer's coalition) for even this degree of concession to the French. Europeanisation involves abandoning Germany's legal claims on the Saar; reaffirmed by the Bundestag only last .tuly. Dr. Adenauer counts this a small loss against the great gain of integrating Germany into Western Europe. But the less the French look like -agreeing to that integration, the more difficult it will be for him to maintain his point.
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