Treaty of Brussels

The Treaty of Brussels, also called the Brussels Pact, was a collective defence and cooperation agreement signed on 17 March 1948 by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It created the Western Union and bound its members to work together on military, economic, social and cultural matters, and it carried a mutual defence clause. It widened the Treaty of Dunkirk, which Britain and France had concluded the year before as a guard against renewed German or Soviet aggression after the Second World War. Once NATO was founded, the Western Union Defence Organisation moved its headquarters, personnel and plans to NATO in December 1950, which left the original treaty with little independent authority. After the failure of the European Defence Community in France, the 1954 Paris Conference amended the text as the Modified Brussels Treaty, which brought in Italy and Germany and set up the Western European Union. That modified treaty was terminated on 31 March 2010, once the European Union had gained its own mutual defence clause.