The Press FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1956. Saar Agreement

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27989, 8 June 1956, Page 10

The Press FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1956. Saar Agreement

The communique announcing agreement between France and Western Germany over the future of the Saar is most welcome. It was feared that relations between the two States might be dangerously strained after the Saar population rejected at the referendum last October the solution of the Saar problem worked out, after long negotiations, by France and Western Germany. Both Governments recommended to the electors a scheme which would make the Saar the nucleus of a union which would promote French, German, and European economic co-operation. The disputed territory would be “ Europeanised ” and given status within a Western European Union. At the referendum the electors rejected this plan, and two months later replaced their pro-French “ Europeanist ” Government by one pledged to promote integration into Western Germany. Political integration was demanded immediately and economic integration within two or three years. The French took this rebuff to their political ambitions in the Saar remarkably calmly. They agreed to constitutional changes subject to satisfactory arrangements about economic compensations and adjustments. The retention of some coal reserves was their chief local demand; but they were more anxious to obtain a .German undertaking to make certain stretches of the Moselle river navigable. This canal would provide a 168-mile link between Lorraine and the Rhine so that coal from the Ruhr might reach the main centres of France’s steel industry by barge and the products of Lorraine industry might travel by water to Rotterdam, and so to world markets. France believes that cheap transport is the only guarantee of French industry being able to compete with the Ruhr on more or less equal terms. Since the war, of course, French policy towards the Saar has been inspired by fear of a Europe dominated economically by a revived Ruhr. Although the Ruhr industrialists opposed the canal project on a variety of grounds, it found increasing favour with West German politicians. Last month the West German Foreign Minister (Mr von Bretano) told his Parliament that the canal project should be judged at least as much by political as by economic standards, and that agreement to it might well be a fair price to pay for improved FrenchGerman relations. The joint communique of the French and German negotiators at Luxembourg confirms France’s agreement to the return of the Saar next January to its pre-war union with Germany. On the other hand, Germany has agreed to France retaining some mining rights, and to compensation for the surrender, over a period, of others. Even more important, Germany has agreed to construct the Moselle canal, and to pay part of the cost. The agreements will have to be ratified by the French and German Parliaments; and ratification may not be secured without arguments in both legislatures. It is to be hoped that they will be accepted for what they are—a very just compromise between conflicting national claims in the interest of European peace and co-operation.