The concept of EPC had been under consideration from early 60s but due to opinion difference between General de Gaulle and his partners, its implementation had been halted.
Subsequent development of both political and economic activities in countries outside Europe forced the members to review their foreign policies.
[1] The idea of the supranational European Defence Community came about following a summit in The Hague (1969) in which the EC heads of state and government instructed their foreign ministers to "study the best way of achieving progress in the matter of political unification, within the context of enlargement.
"[2] The foreign ministers subsequently drafted the Luxembourg/Davignon report (1970), which created an informal intergovernmental consultation mechanism where member states could achieve "politics of scale" (Ginsberg, 1989).
[3] While EPC adopted the intergovernmental nature of the Fouchet Plans, it disregarded the 'French grandeur' of the Charles de Gaulle era.