[2] This was eventually overcome by the British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden proposing that West Germany become a member of NATO and the removal of the references to the European Defense Community in the Bonn–Paris conventions.

It formally ended Germany's status as an occupied territory and recognised its rights of a sovereign state, with certain restrictions that remained in place until German reunification in 1990.

Article 1 of Schedule I of the Settlement Convention provides that the Federal Republic of Germany is accorded "the full authority of a sovereign State over its internal and external affairs".

[4] Miriam Aziz of The Robert Schumann Centre, of the European University Institute, makes the point that there is a difference between the wording of the Settlement Convention "the full authority of a sovereign State" and the wording in the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany of 1990 in which Germany is referred to as having "full sovereignty over its internal and external affairs", gives rise to a distinction between de facto and de jure sovereignty.

[5][6] Detlef Junker of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg agrees with this analysis: "In the October 23, 1954, Paris Agreements, Adenauer pushed through the following laconic wording: 'The Federal Republic shall accordingly [after termination of the occupation regime] have the full authority of a sovereign state over its internal and external affairs.'