Monnet Plan

The Monnet plan was proposed by French civil servant Jean Monnet after the end of World War II. It was a reconstruction plan for France that proposed giving France control over the German coal and steel areas of the Ruhr area and Saar and using these resources to bring France to 150% of pre-war industrial production. The plan was adopted by Charles de Gaulle in early 1946. The plan would permanently limit capacity, and greatly increase power.

The early French plans were concerned with keeping Germany weak and strengthening the French economy at the expense of that of Germany. French foreign policy aimed to dismantle German heavy industry, place the coal rich Ruhr area and Rhineland under French control or at a minimum internationalize them, and also to join the coal-rich Saarland with the iron-rich province of Lorraine (which had been handed over from Germany to France again in 1944). When American diplomats reminded the French of what a devastating effect this would have on the German economy, France's response was to suggest the Germans would just have to "make [the] necessary adjustments" to deal with the inevitable foreign exchange deficit.

The "Monnet Plan" (1946 - 1950) was in effect the first five-year plan for modernization and equipment, a plan for national economic reconstruction which drew heavily on earlier French plans to make France the largest steel producer in Europe. Monnet's aim was to modernize the French economy so as to make it internationally competitive, especially versus German exports. To carry out his plans he created the Planning Commissariat (Commissariat général du Plan) and entrenched it in the French bureaucracy. Germany was seen as a necessary tool for carrying out the plans. The planned steel production increases to 15 million tonnes of steel a year could only be achieved by replacing former German steel exports and increasing the imports of German coal and coke, making control of this German resource vital.

French proposals for the area spanned by the German coalfields east of the Rhine had since late 1945, therefore, been to turn it into an International State with its own currency and customs and supervised by an International Authority which would include the US and France. Part of the reason for these proposals was in 1946 explained to the US by a French Foreign Office official: "With the aim of military security we prefer to increase French steel production and output to the detriment of the Ruhr." The French plans for industrial expansion required an additional 1,000,000 workers for 4 years, and France therefore planned on keeping for as long as possible the German prisoners employed in mining, agriculture, and rebuilding.

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