On 17 February 1955, William Allan Cunningham Mathieson, a British diplomat in the Colonial Office, sends a letter to Léon Pignon, Political Affairs Director in the Ministry for Overseas France, in which he outlines the concerns in the Colonial Office over Recommendation 61 of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe on the so-called “Strasbourg Plan” for the integration of colonial development with European economic unity. British objections concern both economic reasons and also the political impact of the Strasbourg Plan. Recommendation 61 concerning the Special Report of the OEEC on the Strasbourg Plan sets out the principle that ‘the policy of European integration entails, as a corollary, cooperation in the interests of their common prosperity, between metropolitan powers, the overseas countries which have constitutional links with them and the other member countries of the Council of Europe’.