Six months after the Treaty for a European Defence Community (EDC) was signed in Paris, none of the national parliaments of the six signatories had yet ratified it. As Eden explained to Churchill in early January 1953, the West Germans were concerned that the EDC Treaty conflicted with German Basic Law, which made no allowance for rearmament. The treaty would therefore need a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to pass rather than a simple majority. However, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had only the support of just over half of German parliamentarians – far short of the necessary two-thirds. The German Constitutional Court was examining the issue, and Adenauer was ‘determined to secure German ratification as soon as this is politically and constitutionally practicable’. In doing so, however, he faced a political risk: the German people were by no means united around his policies of greater integration with other European countries, and a narrow victory in the Bundestag could undermine his support in the long run.

In France, the problem was even greater. Antoine Pinay's government had been defeated in the recent election, leading to the rise of René Mayer. It was the eighteenth change of power in France since the end of the war, and Mayer was the twelfth man to lead the French government in eight years. He immediately attempted to renegotiate the Treaty, linking its ratification to the drafting of some additional protocols, a definition of the European status of the Saar region and closer British association with the EDC. Bidault, replacing Schuman as French Foreign Minister for the third time, assured the British government that there was ‘no question of modifying the main principles of the E.D.C. and that the new protocols are intended to clarify and reassure French opinion’. Nevertheless, he had yet to make their wording public, which had ‘perturbed’ Adenauer. The British Ambassador in Paris, Sir Oliver Harvey, had patiently explained to Bidault the reasons why it was impossible for the United Kingdom to become a member of the EDC, but his position had been undermined by Field Marshal Montgomery, who had publicly urged British Members of Parliament visiting the headquarters of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) to reconsider their position and accept British membership of the EDC.