Without holding a majority and being even less popular than before, the annexationist current was by no means negligible and made its voice heard, at least until 1948. It was in this year that the Benelux governments participated in the Conference of London on the future of Germany, during which it was decided to create a new state of West Germany: the Federal Republic of Germany, which would officially come into existence in May 1949. "However," Christoph Brüll continues, “this conference was also the occasion for the creation of a secret working group on the Benelux demands and on Germany’s western border. And in the spring of 1949, Belgium’s grievances were accepted. However, at this time it was recognised that the railway was absolutely unprofitable, which markedly changed the Belgian position; and at the start of April 1949, the Belgian government finally decided, with the agreement of the Allies, to abandon annexation of the two enclaves ... This retreat was cleverly presented retreat as a gesture of reconciliation and European inspiration. It should be noted that the Allies were motivated in their position by the concern to not amputate the German territory, and in relation to the Belgians, by the reluctance associated with the constraints of a Parliamentary vote to make any changes to the frontiers. Still, the Belgian gesture was a veritable diplomatic success and forged the “European” image of the Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak, whose profile emerged all the stronger from the experience. As an aside, the inhabitants of the two enclaves – some 3,800 Germans dispersed over barely 35 square kilometres – would have preferred, for purely economic reasons, to be part of Belgium. A few years later, the economic relaunch of Germany would make them forget about what might have been …”

Among other things, Christoph Brüll’s research sheds light upon the many abuses of power committed by the Belgian troops stationed in Germany. Although not exclusively committed by the Belgians, we can find explanations for these abuses of power in the very composition of the Belgian army, which was at the time made up of volunteers with a clear desire to fight to Germans. Moreover, the hunt for collaborators hiding on German soil and the search by some for family members who had disappeared, contributed to this increase in violence. Nevertheless, the researcher notes that after 1947 the situation improved markedly, mainly because of the progressive transformation of the Belgian army into an army of conscripts, which increased “exchanges” with the local population (participation in local festivities, the black market, and marriages from 1951 onwards, etc), often against the express wishes of the national Minister of Defence.

As for Paul-Henri Spaak, he believed that the integration of Germany into Europe was absolutely essential for security reasons: he therefore transformed the atmosphere of suspicion into the need for rapprochement between the countries of Western Europe. On the German side, Chancellor Adenauer also actively worked to position his country within the concert of modern nations, to pacify relations with neighbouring countries and to strongly - and definitively - anchor Germany within the “western” camp and within the Europe that was emerging.