Early in June 1955 the six foreign ministers of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) met on the island of Sicily, at Messina. It was the first time that they had come together since the previous summer and the debacle of the European Defence Community (EDC) project. That failure had not only witnessed the death of a series of interlinked supranational projects but it had also threatened to leave a dangerous gap in Europe's defences since the EDC was supposed to provide the framework for a limited West German rearmament. The cause of the failure had lain clearly with France's inability to find a parliamentary majority but part of that, in turn, was attributed to a French fear of being isolated with Germany in a military alliance. French socialist leaders, in particular, had urged that the United Kingdom should commit its troops in Europe as a gesture which would save the EDC and permit German rearmament to go ahead. At the time the UK had refused. Once the EDC Treaty had failed, however, it had not only given a pledge to maintain troops in Europe but also entered a defence pact with ‘the Six’, the Western European Union, which allowed German rearmament to take place within the framework of NATO. Moreover, in this period, it had further strengthened its links with the Six by signing the first ever association agreement with the ECSC itself. Given these closer ties which had developed between the UK and ‘little Europe’ since the summer of 1954, it was natural that when the Six decided in Messina to investigate ways of increasing cooperation among themselves in the fields of atomic energy, trade, classical energy and transport they should have invited the UK to become associated with that venture too from the start.

The rest of the story is well known. The UK decided to send representatives to the talks but withdrew them in November 1955 when work on drafting the final report began, and did so in such a way as to make clear that it would reject any scheme offered. A year later, however, it offered to negotiate an industrial free trade area, within the framework of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which would embrace the customs union that the Six were planning to create.