Introduction
The recent decision by the British electorate to leave the European Union has been perceived as the most evident symbol of the European integration crisis. For more than half a century, the EC/EU witnessed a constant process of enlargement, which, until the British referendum, appeared destined to absorb almost all of the countries on the European continent, with the minor exceptions of Switzerland and Norway. Even countries regarded as Europe’s ‘border’, such as Turkey or Ukraine, were eager to become full members of the EU, while some small Balkan nations still hope for a positive outcome of their negotiation processes.
But Brexit has demonstrated that European integration is not a linear, no-return process. If a state can join the EU, it can also decide to leave – in Britain’s case, against the advice of most politicians, opinion-makers and officials in Brussels. Partly, this was a reaction to the problems the EU has faced in recent years: the financial and economic crisis, mass migration from Africa and the Middle East, and the dramatic and dangerous situations along Europe’s borders (Ukraine, Turkey, Syria and Libya), to name a few. This long list of problems has strengthened and extended Euro-sceptic sentiments, if not open hostility, towards the EU, thus fuelling the desire to leave what is perceived as a constraining and maligned structure.1 Yet this does not completely explain the reasons behind the growing gap between the European/Europeanist elites and large sectors of European voters.2
A longue durée historical analysis, as proposed in the introduction to this volume, may shed a different light on these developments. In this perspective, enlargement seems to offer a stimulating test case. Why was enlargement for a long time regarded as one of the most obvious and important successes of European integration? Was it first and foremost economic benefits that made countries willing to join the EC/EU? Or did the growing awareness of a common political and cultural identity boost the spreading of a European ideal, from a ‘small Europe’ of the Six to a EU including Sweden and Cyprus, Portugal and Estonia? A comparison between two major enlargements – the enlargement towards Southern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, and the enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe in the mid-2000s – and a connected analysis of the main characteristics of these two processes, offer insights for understanding the roots of today’s EU crisis.
This chapter will contextualise several of the contributions to this volume by embedding the enlargement processes in the broader social, economic and political shifts of the twentieth century. It does so through a longue durée analysis stretching from the interwar period until the multiple crises hampering today’s EU, with a particular focus on the two aforementioned rounds of enlargement. While Helene Sjursen (Chapter 3) looks at what enlargement says about the EC/EU qua polity and Marise Cremona (Chapter 2) traces enlargement as a policy, from the 1960s until today, this chapter explores how applicants approached the EC/EU from the 1960s onwards. Second, the chapter argues that though the Southern and Central and Eastern European enlargements were seen as momentous achievements for European democracy and shaped the EC/EU’s view of itself as a defender of liberal, market and democratic values and rights, it was the prospect of economic growth and level-headed geostrategic considerations that induced the applicants to embrace such values. In fact, as the crisis lasting since the mid-2000s shows, one may argue that one does not exist without the other. In this way, this chapter offers a more interest-based analysis of why enlargement takes place, which serves as a balance to the chapters exploring the ideational discourses that have become a significant part of enlargement as a policy and process.
The enlargement to Southern Europe: the quest for democracy and an affluent society
At the beginning of the 1970s, Southern Europe was still characterised by the existence of three dictatorial regimes in Greece, Portugal and Spain. These dictatorships had different characters and different origins. Portugal had become an authoritarian regime between the late 1920s and the early 1930s under the leadership of a slightly improbable dictator, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar – a shy university professor who disliked the exterior aspects of his contemporary fellow dictators (mass rallies, boasting rhetoric, etc.). Nonetheless, Salazar created an authoritarian regime that lasted for decades and survived his death in 1970, when Marcelo Caetano, another university professor apparently eager to follow Salazar’s path, replaced the Portuguese leader.3 As far as Spain was concerned, the other Iberian nation was still ruled by General Francisco Franco. Franco was the main promoter, in 1936, of a coup d’état, that led to one of Europe’s bloodiest civil wars, lasting some three years, and perceived at the time as the symbol of the fight between Fascism and Nazism, on the one hand, and an anti-Fascist coalition largely supported by the Soviet Union and the Communist International, on the other. From 1939 onward, Franco imposed a tough dictatorship, which brutally wiped out all the opposition forces, and developed a closed society and an economic system based on autarkical principles. In the 1950s, Spain’s economy opened up to free trade and the international market, but Franco showed no intention of giving up the main dictatorial traits of his regime.4
Greece came out of the Second World War as a very weak democracy, hampered by a bloody civil war between the Royal government and a strong Communist front that had been instrumental in the Greek resistance movement. Moreover, in the immediate post-war period, Greece, one of the main causes of the Truman Doctrine, was characterised by heavy US interference, something large sections of the Greek population resented.5 In 1967 – as a consequence of a period of internal turmoil and harsh conflicts between conservative power groups (the monarchy, military leaders, etc.) and some progressive left wing parties, a group of middle-rank officers (colonels and lieutenant colonels) launched a successful coup d’état. They set up a military dictatorship, which made large use of imprisonment and torture against political opponents.6
The three dictators’ experience in the field of foreign policy was not the same. During the 1930s, Salazar’s Portugal manoeuvred an ambiguous policy of neutrality; although it demonstrated a slightly sympathetic attitude towards Mussolini and other conservative regimes, it maintained its traditional alliance with Britain. During the Second World War, Salazar willy-nilly progressively aligned himself with Western powers and conceded air bases in the Azores to both the US and Britain. As a consequence of the Cold War, Portugal joined the Marshall Plan and, though leaders in some Member States were doubtful of Lisbon’s democratic record, was a founding member of the Atlantic Alliance. Meanwhile, Salazar had his personal view of Portugal’s international role, believing that Portugal’s foreign policy interests made it an Atlantic nation whose outlook should be towards the Atlantic Ocean and the Portuguese African empire. So, although Portugal joined the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), mainly owing to its traditional economic bonds with Britain, Lisbon showed little interest in the continental European construction based on Monnet’s functionalist approach: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Defence Community (EDC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and EURATOM.7
Spain’s close links with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany strongly influenced the Western powers’ approach to Madrid’s international position in the post-war period. Spain was not admitted to the United Nations, and was barred from the Marshall Plan, nor was it regarded as a feasible candidate for the Atlantic Alliance. Nevertheless, the deepening of the Cold War, and its increasingly military character, led the US to develop some form of economic and military support to the Franco regime; the outcome of such a development was the signature of a bilateral Spanish-American alliance during the Eisenhower administration. In the 1960s, Franco, mainly for economic reasons, approached the EEC, hoping that Spain could become a member of the EC. However, as Karamouzi and De Angelis detail (Chapter 7), a statement by the European Parliament combined doubts nurtured by several Member States, and led to the rejection of Spanish participation in the Community in 1962. This was of great significance since it was the first time the EEC articulated in a public declaration that liberal democratic values and institutions were a prerequisite of any candidature for membership.8
During the post-war period, Greece joined the Marshall Plan, the Council of Europe and, in 1952, became a member of the Atlantic Alliance. And in the early 1960s, Greece became the first associated country to the Community, a sort of first step towards full membership. With the advent of the Colonels’ regime in 1967, the early reactions of the EC towards the dictatorship were cautious. However, owing to pressures from the European Parliament, the European Commission, and a few Member States, the EC decided to freeze the Association Treaty and minimise cooperation with the military junta.9
Although the regimes in Lisbon, Madrid and Athens appeared to be in firm control of their domestic situations in the early 1970s, they were increasingly out of step with the political and economic realities of Europe. In spite of their differences, the three authoritarian governments had their roots in inter-war Europe – Greece had experienced coups d’état in the 1920s and the 1930s – and their survival was closely tied to the Cold War climax of the late 1940s and the mid-1960s. But between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the Western world experienced a series of radical social, cultural and political changes – a real turning point in both US and European history. These dramatic changes – which historians have labelled ‘the shock of the global’, ‘the origins of our modernity’, or the ‘entry into a different world’ – coincided with a turn to the left in Western Europe’s political, cultural and psychological values.10 Such a turn to the left, mainly the consequence of the social transformation linked to the advent of a consumer society, the spreading of ideals of 1968 and the renegotiation of traditional ways of living, was not tied to a strengthening of the traditional Communist Parties’ role. On the contrary, those parties were often perceived as characterised by ‘conservative’ values not too far from those of a bourgeois society. Especially the younger generations began to look to new radical models such as Cuba, China, Vietnam and ‘Third World’ liberation movements.
Meanwhile, the conflict between the US and the USSR appeared to soften: the US, the Soviet Union and the whole of the European continent were experiencing the ‘great détente’, symbolised by the 1975 Helsinki agreements on cooperation and security in Europe.11 If Western Europe’s moderate political leadership gladly complied with détente, it was far less ready to accept the radical ‘revolution’ that seemed to shape their societies. On the other hand, they were conscious of the need to change some of their attitudes and values, at least in the social and economic sphere, in order to maintain political consensus in a dramatically changed social environment. It is of much relevance to notice the role public opinion and pressure groups belonging to civil society played with regard to international issues. Human rights became an important factor, and non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International were able to influence the attitudes and policies of numerous Western European governments towards the remnants of Fascism – as right wing regimes in Spain, Portugal and Greece were often labelled. Finally, the media’s influence increased and grew increasingly critical of those in power.12 Western European leaders’ decisions were largely influenced by these developments in the European political and cultural climate. Between 1969 and 1970, for example, Greece was compelled to leave the Council of Europe pending a severe condemnation for its violation of huma...
