Paris Agreements (1954)

The End of the Occupation Regime and West Germany's Conditional Sovereignty

The Paris Agreements are the set of documents signed in Paris on 23 October 1954 by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and West Germany, together with Italy, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Their core purpose was to replace the 1949 Occupation Statute and end the occupation regime in West Germany. By revising the 1952 General Treaty (Deutschlandvertrag), they granted the Federal Republic "the full authority of a sovereign state" over its internal and external affairs.

That sovereignty was not unlimited. The United States, the United Kingdom and France retained the rights they derived from the 1945 Berlin Declaration concerning Berlin and Germany as a whole. Authority over German disarmament also remained with the three Western powers, and Allied troops stationed in West Germany enjoyed special rights secured by the treaties. It was only through the 1990 Two Plus Four Agreement that West Germany, then Germany, obtained full sovereignty.

Rearmament, the Western European Union and NATO Accession

The starting point of the agreements was the French National Assembly's rejection of the European Defence Community (EDC) treaty on 30 August 1954. To produce an alternative, a Nine-Power Conference met in London from 28 September to 3 October 1954, and its decisions were put into treaty form at the Paris conference of 19 to 23 October.

A protocol modifying and completing the Brussels Treaty brought West Germany and Italy into that treaty and created the Western European Union (WEU). The WEU established an arms control system and set ceilings on the armed forces of each member state. West Germany declared that it renounced nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and was also banned from developing certain weapons such as large warships. A separate protocol admitted West Germany to NATO as its fifteenth member. The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada undertook to keep forces on the European continent.

Sources differ on the number of instruments signed. English-language accounts say as many as twelve international agreements were signed in Paris, while German-language accounts count eleven, listing the General Treaty, WEU accession, NATO accession, the treaty on the presence of foreign forces, and the agreement on the Saar Statute among the principal instruments.

Entry into Force and the Ratification Fight

The German Bundestag approved the agreements on 27 February 1955 against the votes of the Social Democrats, and the Deutschlandvertrag entered into force on 5 May 1955. West Germany became a member of the WEU and NATO the following day.

The Saar question was handled in separate negotiations between France and West Germany. The agreement on the Saar Statute provided for the territory's "Europeanisation" subject to a referendum of its residents, but in the vote held on 23 October 1955 the residents rejected the proposal by roughly two to one. Under the Saar Treaty of 27 October 1956, the Saarland was incorporated into West Germany as a state on 1 January 1957.

Soviet and East German Opposition and the Warsaw Pact

The Soviet Union, the GDR and other socialist states opposed the agreements outright, arguing that they blocked German unification and cemented the military division of Europe. The General Treaty contained the claim that West Germany was the sole representative of the whole German people, to which the GDR responded by demanding formal multilateral negotiations on German unity.

On 14 May 1955 the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance with seven Eastern European states in Warsaw, founding the Warsaw Pact. Its preamble stated that West Germany's rearmament and NATO accession threatened the security of peace-loving states.