The failure of a grand design: Mitterrand's European confederation, 1989-1991

Contemporary European History

Volumn 17, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 391-412

  Bozo, Frédéric ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ SORBONNE NOUVELLE PARIS 3   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950171725     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777308004542     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. François Mitterrand, New Year address, 31 December 1989, Politique étrangère de la France (hereafter PEF), November-December 1989, 227-8
2. Narratives of the European confederation project and its failure are scarce: see Frédéric Bozo, Mitterrand, la fin de la guerre froide et l'unification allemande (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2005), 344-61 (English translation forthcoming, Berghahn Books)
3. Pierre Favier and Michel Martin-Roland, La Décennie Mitterrand (Paris: Le Seuil, 1999), IV, 170-7
4. For testimonies by former actors, see Roland Dumas, 'Un projet mort-né: la Confédération européenne, Politique étrangère, 3 (2001), 687-703
5. and Andrei Grachev, 'From the Common European Home to European Confederation: François Mitterrand and Mikhail Gorbachev in Search of a Road to a Greater Europe', in Frédéric Bozo, Marie-Pierre Rey, N. Piers Ludlow and Leopoldo Nuti, eds., Europe and the End of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (London: Routledge, 2008)
6. Apart from the works that focus specifically on France's role, as those mentioned above, the by now quite numerous narratives of international diplomacy of the end of the cold war generally offer a very limited, and usually quite critical, coverage of the confederation project; see, for example, Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider's Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989-1992 (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997), 172
7. For a presentation of the dominant narrative of French policy at the end of the cold war and a refutation of it through an archive-based reappraisal, see Frédéric Bozo, 'Mitterrand's France, the End of the Cold War, and German Unification: a Reappraisal', Cold War History, 7, 4 (2007), 455-78, and Mitterrand
8. see also Tilo Schabert, Wie Weltgeschichte gemacht wird. Frankreich und die deutsche Einheit (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2002)
9. For a wider reappraisal of the role of 'Europe' in these events, see Bozo et al., Europe and the End of the Cold War
10. Text of the press conference in Charles de Gaulle, Discours et messages, (Paris: Plon, 1970), IV, 325-42
11. For an analysis of de Gaulle's cold war policies and post-cold war vision, see Frédéric Bozo, 'France, "Gaullism", and the Cold War', in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, Cambridge History of the Cold War, Vol. 2, Crisis and Détente (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
12. François Mitterrand, New Year address, 31 December 1981, PEF, November-December 1981, 85
13. See François Mitterrand, Réflexions sur la politique étrangère de la France (Paris: Fayard, 1986)
14. On this, see Marie-Pierre Rey, '"Europe is our Common Home": A Study of Gorbachev's Diplomatic Concept', Cold War History, 4, 2 (January 2004), 63-5
15. Hubert Védrine, Les Mondes de François Mitterrand. A l'Elysée 1981-1995 (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 464
16. On this see Bozo, Mitterrand, 94-102
17. 'Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatspräsident Mitterrand, Latché, 4. Januar 1990', in Hanns Jürgen Küsters and Daniel Hofmann, eds., Deutsche Einheit. Sonderedition aus den Akten des Bundeskanzleramtes 1989/90 (Munich: R. Oldenburg, 1998), 689-890
18. 'Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Staatsprä sidentMitterrand, Paris, 15. Februar 1990', in Küsters and Hofmann, Deutsche Einheit, 849
19. TD Prague 99, 25 January 1991
20. Favier and Martin-Roland, La Décennie Mitterrand, p. 173
21. MAE, Direction des affaires économiques et financières, note, Confédération, 24 January 1991, private papers
22. TD Diplomatie 691, 20 December 1990, AD, ASD, QM, box 20
23. MAE, Note de Jean Musitelli, Assises de la Confedération européenne, 28 January 1991, private papers
24. On this, see Vojtech Mastny, 'Eastern Europe and the early prospects for EC/EU and NATO membership', in Bozo et al., Europe and the End of the Cold War
25. Telegram Washington 25, 5 January 1990, AD, ASD, QM, box 20