Just as the Schuman Plan had been launched, the escalation of the Cold War on the Korean peninsula in the summer of 1950 upset debates about European integration. The Korean War refuelled concerns about West German rearmament, and opened up the option of doing so through membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Seeking to bind the Federal Republic to the European project, Jean Monnet therefore drafted a plan for a European Defence Community. The French Prime Minister René Pleven announced the Plan in November 1950 (Ruane 2000: 15–30).

The prospect of a European army prompted a lobby for the creation of a political union that could accommodate such an initiative. Two years later, the task of drafting the statute for a European Political Community (EPC) was entrusted to the Ad Hoc Assembly, a body that was set up for the occasion, consisting of delegates from the Consultative Assembly and the ECSC Common Assembly. It was a testament to the unwavering belief of federalists who had recognized in the ECSC the possible prelude to political union. This chapter further explores this constitutional moment between 1950 and 1954, using the Ad Hoc Assembly's proceedings as a unique glimpse into the ideas on pan-European democracy that circulated in Strasbourg and beyond.

The EPC never materialized, because in August 1954, the French parliament voted against the EDC Treaty, thereby terminating the ratification process. The French “non” has a prominent place in the standard account of European integration history, as it ushered in a crisis which was subsequently resolved at Messina in 1955, eventually resulting in the Treaties of Rome. In this account, the EDC and the EPC feature as aberrations in the progressive economic integration of Europe. Instead, historians have studied the fate of the EDC in the context of the geopolitical relations of the Cold War (Dumoulin 2000; Ruane 2000; Loth 1995; Risso 2007).

Despite these communities never seeing the light of day, this episode is worth studying. At a time when the Consultative Assembly had convened in plenary only three times and the ECSC Common Assembly had only just been created, the Ad Hoc Assembly was a veritable proving ground for European parliamentarism.