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Abstract: „Reactions to the Franco-German treaty of friendship were unusually negative in the Netherlands. Although the Dutch greeted Franco-German reconciliation in principle, they rejected the form and timing of the treaty. This attitude among the Dutch becomes understandable if we locate it in the larger context of the European process of integration in the 1950s and 1960s, which is the aim of this contribution. The author shows that there is a close relationship between the Dutch repudiation of the Franco-German treaty of friendship, the Dutch resistance against the European Political Union (EPU) proposed by de Gaulle and Adenauer, and the rejection of a Common Europe as well as independent French nuclear armament. This article describes the background of Dutch policy in international and European affairs to make it clear why Joseph Luns, the long-serving foreign minister of the Netherlands, pursued an extraordinarily harsh line against Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy that blocked the progress of the European integration process as much as possible throughout the 1960s.“