On 23 January 1956, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafts a memorandum in which it sets out the interest that France would have, along with its European partners, in concentrating on the use of nuclear energy for peaceful and civilian purposes.

Am 24. Januar 1956 richtet General Pierre Gaston Billotte, französischer Verteidigungsminister, ein vertrauliches Schreiben an den Premierminister Edgar Faure und an den Außenminister Antoine Pinay, in dem er betont, wie wichtig für Frankreich neben seinem Engagement im Rahmen von Euratom die Wahrung der atomaren militärischen Unabhängigkeit ist.

Am 26. April 1956 richtet Paul-Henri Spaak, belgischer Außenminister und Vorsitzender des von der Konferenz von Messina eingesetzten Regierungsausschusses, ein Schreiben an seine Amtskollegen in der BRD, Frankreich, Italien, Luxemburg und den Niederlanden, in dem er für ein Regelung plädiert, der zufolge ein Euratom-Mitgliedstaat möglicherweise von dem Grundsatz der friedlichen Entwicklung der Atomenergie und -industrie durch die europäischen Staaten ausgenommen werden könnte.

On 22 June 1956, a few days before the opening of the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom, Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, French Minister for National Defence and the Armed Forces, makes Christian Pineau, his counterpart at the French Foreign Ministry, aware of his determination to safeguard France’s freedom to manufacture nuclear weapons independently of its accession to Euratom.

On 25 June 1956, Maurice Faure, French State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Head of the French Delegation to the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom, invites various French civil and military experts to a luncheon held at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs during which he outlines the French diplomatic strategy with regard to the military aspects of nuclear energy in Europe.

In August 1956, Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, French Minister for National Defence and the Armed Forces, explains why French defence would be nothing but a myth if the country had to abandon the manufacture of nuclear missiles as a result of its Euratom commitments.

On 10 October 1956, Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, French Minister for National Defence and the Armed Forces, sends a letter to Guy Mollet, President of the French Council of Ministers, in which he emphasises the need for negotiations with the European partners on a Euratom treaty which would give France the possibility of manufacturing nuclear weapons.

On 9 and 10 December 1956, the French daily newspaper Le Monde publishes the first official figures on the state of the national nuclear fuel reserves, summarises French investment in the nuclear sector and shows the output of national generating sites based on the figures reported by Georges Guille, Junior Minister for Relations with Parliament and for Nuclear Power in the Prime Minister’s Office.

On 1 February 1957, the Secretariat of the Euratom Group at the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom reviews the possible military uses of atomic energy in the framework of the future European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC).

Am 12. Januar 1957 illustriert der Karikaturist Louis Mitelberg in der französischen kommunistischen Tageszeitung L’Humanité die Euratom-Debatten in Frankreich und kritisiert die drohende militärische Nutzung der Atomenergie.