demands sympathetically. They argued for a continuation of the discussion while keeping France notified of the developments but making only technical decisions and absolutely no explicit commitments. While the Belgians wished to continue operations within the Commission and the Council, the Luxembourgish stressed that any meetings of the Commission or Council must be strictly unofficial and that any action that could be viewed by France as confrontational must be avoided. As a result, no decisions were made in the initial meetings following the start of the crisis. Luxembourg argued that the central issues of the crisis came from a lack of a decided common goal for the community, something that needed to be determined for any further treaties to be agreed upon and ratified. In contrast to the other Benelux states moving towards roles as peacekeepers and mediators, the Netherlands were opposed to the French decision to leave Brussels from the beginning. They quickly aligned themselves with the positions of West Germany and Italy, while recognising the benefits of continued communication with France as the community moved forward. Nevertheless, they were largely in favour of proceeding with official negotiations with only five states and, if possible, making decisions for France to come to terms with if they rejoined the community in the future. These different stances within the Benelux complicated the cohesiveness of any decision adopted by COCOPO. Without the backing of the Netherlands, the proposal to postpone negotiations submitted by Belgium and Luxembourg was immediately rejected. The committee did not adopt any common decision until the proposal of the Spaak Plan, created by Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak. The Spaak Plan suggested a meeting of the Council without the participation of the Commission, where a common stance on the critical issues surrounding the crisis would be decided and presented to France for evaluation, hopefully leading towards negotiation and the return of the French Delegation. That became the stance of COCOPO as a whole, to wait out the crisis, while showing some initiative to resolve it and bring France back to the discussion. Italian and West German reaction Both Italy and West Germany were extremely dissatisfied with the French domination in the early years of the EEC. By utilising their own country’s fragile political situation, they managed to turn the Treaty of Rome into a major French diplomatic victory, and no other country was able to gain as much as