Higgs and super-Higgs effects with naturally vanishing classical vacuum energy

We construct N = 1 supergravity models where the gauge symmetry and supersymmetry are both spontaneously broken, with naturally vanishing classical vacuum energy and unsuppressed Goldstino components along gauge non-singlet directions. We discuss some physically interesting situations where such a mechanism could play a role, and identify the breaking of a grand-unified gauge group as the most likely possibility. We show that, even when the gravitino mass is much smaller than the scale mx of gauge symmetry breaking, important features can be missed if we first naively integrate out the degrees of freedom of mass O(mx), in the limit of unbroken supersymmetry, and then describe the super-Higgs effect in the resulting effective theory. We also comment on possible connections with extended supergravities and realistic four-dimensional string constructions.