La Belgique francophone face au référendum sarrois de 1955

Since 1945, French-speaking Belgians were looking at the « Saar problem », stumbling block of Europe’s build-up, with a mixture of awe and hope. In 1955, as the inhabitants were asked to vote on a peculiar status of “Europeanised” autonomous territory (within the WEU but keeping economical union with France), the coming plebiscite was seen as a good bid on Europe’s future. At first, Belgian public opinion was under the influence of optimistic statements made by official French and autonomist propaganda. After the failure of the plebiscite, Belgian journalists and diplomats tried to find some simple and often rather bombastic explanations: intern and extern weakness of France seen as over-cautious or tinted with europhobia, lack of appeal of the European idea, attractiveness of the German economical bloom, Nazi nostalgia or even perennial nationalism of the German man. Then, Saarland, having refused to be an oddity in a nation-based Europe, fell from public interest into oblivion...