Greece, the EEC and the Cold War 1974-1979

The Second Enlargement

E. Karamouzi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781349461363, 9781137331328
• eBook ISBN: 9781137331335
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Eirini Karamouzi explores the history of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the turbulent decade of the 1970s and especially the Community's response to the fall of the Greek dictatorship and the country's application for EEC membership. Thebook constitutes the first multi-archival study on the second enlargement of the EEC.

1

Democracy and European Integration: Greece’s Strategy of Democratisation

Introduction

Early in the morning of 12 June 1975, just a few days after the ratification of the new Greek constitution, Constantinos Karamanlis’ government submitted a formal application for Greece to join the EEC. The Greek ambassador to the EEC, Stephanos Stathatos, sent the formal request to the president of the Council of Ministers, the Irish minister of foreign affairs, Gareth Fitzgerald. On the same day, Karamanlis informed the ambassadors of the nine member states of the Community that

Greece belongs and desires to belong in Europe, with which it has been connected for a long time in many ways – politically, economically and historically. Today’s initiative constitutes a natural continuity of the policy I inaugurated 15 years ago . . . Greece does not desire full membership solely on economic grounds. The reasons are mainly political and refer to the consolidation of democracy and the future of the nation.¹

The accepted narrative in Greek political history has tended to describe Greece’s decision to seek full EEC membership as a gradual process that had its origins in the late 1950s and especially, in the 1961 Athens Association agreement.² During this period the European option evolved to become for the Greeks almost a panacea that would cure all of the country’s problems, from economic modernisation to external security.³ Indeed, Kostas Yfantis, focusing mainly on the security dimension, has pointed out ‘that membership was perceived as a means to balance US influence and power, while cementing Greece’s Western orientation and commitment’.⁴ Jose M. Magone agrees with this argument, stating that ‘Karamanlis presented the EEC as an alternative to the rejected patronage of the United States’.⁵ Similarly, Giannis Valinakis claims that ‘it was only natural to consider the European option as the only way to strengthen Greece’s bargaining power and defence capabilities vis-à-vis Turkey’.⁶ Other commentators, such as Panos Kazakos and George Yannopoulos, focus on the highly beneficial economic effects of a possible entry into the EEC.⁷ Likewise, Loukas Tsoukalis highlights the prominence of the economic motive as ‘the importance of Community markets for Greek exports, coupled with the obligations emanating from the Association agreement . . . and the expected gains from its incorporation into the CAP seemed to leave post 1974 Greece with no real option but to apply for membership’.⁸

Yet amid the voluminous writings on the security and economic dimensions of Greece’s application to join the European Community, there has been relatively limited historical and archival-based analysis of an important political dimension to the issue – namely, the link between European integration and the democratisation process in Greece. This link has been studied within a specific, albeit exponentially important, field of ‘transition’ literature that seeks to assess the importance of the international dimension in shaping and constraining national democratisation processes.⁹ For instance, Geoffrey Pridham and Nikiforos Diamantouros have documented the close relationship between European integration and democratic consolidation in Southern Europe.¹⁰ Laurence Whitehead notes that the EEC, in its attempt to consolidate democracy in its own backyard, came up with a stable pattern of rewards and incentives. Ultimately the ‘prospect of membership in the European community produced a substantial long-term pressure for democratization’.¹¹

While accepting the importance of economic and security considerations, this chapter will shed light on what ultimately drove Greece’s European policy – namely, the overriding importance of the democratisation factor in Karamanlis’ quest for Europe. In Athens, a strong link was to develop between the European option and the democratisation process, to the point where the two became very closely interrelated, especially in the minds of the country’s ruling elite.

The strategy of democratisation: 116 crucial days of transition

On 24 July 1974, Constantinos Karamanlis was recalled from his self-imposed exile in Paris to restore democracy in his homeland. This was in the aftermath of the collapse of the Greek military junta prompted by Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974.¹² Karamanlis returned as a deus ex machina to carry out the transition from dictatorship to democracy. His anti-communist record and his conservative credentials in the 1950s and early 1960s, coupled with his critical attitude towards the junta, made him acceptable to the military, the anti-monarchist right and the political centre, respectively.¹³

As has been suggested by many political scientists, the Greek transition to democracy was to become primarily a ‘from above project’, since the seven years of dictatorship and the events that led to its fall ‘were not particularly conducive to a comprehensive and collective strategy for democratization’.¹⁴ Upon his return, Karamanlis faced a situation of ‘structural and institutional tabula rasa’.¹⁵ The monarchy and the army, once important actors in the formulation of Greek foreign and domestic policy, had been completely discredited in the aftermath of the fall of the colonels. The weight of the transition process was thus, inevitably, to fall on the shoulders of Karamanlis and his very close associates.

The task confronting the new Greek prime minister was daunting. The seven years of military dictatorship in Greece had been marked by repression, and ultimately betrayal in Cyprus.¹⁶ In a televised speech on 25 July 1974, Karamanlis declared that during ‘the life of all nations there are moments which impose moral and national exaltation. It is during these moments that a people, disappointed by the recent and distant past, seek with agony their way. It is these moments that our country is experiencing today’.¹⁷ The fall of the junta and the advent of democracy were linked to national humiliation over Cyprus and the possibility of a war with Turkey. Moreover, the imposition of the military dictatorship was viewed by many in Greece as having resulted from the pre-coup political system with its permeability to foreign influence. This conviction led a significant section of political forces and public opinion in Greece to demand a truly new beginning and a break with the postwar period.¹⁸ In turn, a genuine pluralist democracy presupposed the reduction of foreign interference in Greek domestic affairs.¹⁹

The strong foreign influence, which went all the way back to the establishment of the Greek state in 1830, meant that Greek public opinion took for granted the existence of an ‘explicit connection between a political regime and its external links’.²⁰ Greece had a tradition of participation in numerous alliances throughout its modern history because of its small size, economic backwardness and vulnerable strategic location in the Balkans and the Mediterranean.²¹ Such alliances had enabled Greece to strengthen its national security and advance its economic development. Often, however, they had resulted in handicapped democratic institutions and had subjected Greece’s national domestic politics to foreign influence, if not outright interference. As Couloumbis states, ‘in the area of Greek-Great Power relations, political scientists classified Greece among those states with penetrated (dependent) political systems’.²²

With the settlement following the Second World War, Greece experienced a separate and traumatic civil war. The defeat of the Communists was achieved, ultimately, only with direct help from first the British and then the Americans in the latter phases of the civil war.²³ As a consequence, a divisive political environment with weak domestic institutions emerged that paved the way for government dependence on external patronage for its military and political survival.²⁴ From the declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, the USA was to spend nearly $4 billion on economic and military assistance to various Greek governments. This had succeeded in minimising Soviet influence in the region and also provided NATO and the USA a paramount strategic position in the Mediterranean.²⁵ However, the receptiveness to foreign interference by the Greek ruling elites also contributed to making the USA’s involvement in the country’s domestic affairs so intense.²⁶ Due to the country’s financial and geopolitical vulnerability, the political elites saw the intervention of foreign powers in Greek politics as the only viable means of attaining security. This conveyed the impression of a country willingly open to penetration and external manipulation, confirming the traditional ‘permeability of Greek domestic politics to foreign influence’.²⁷ Until at least the early 1950s, Greece was almost totally dependent on the USA, both economically and militarily.²⁸

The dependence of Greece on the USA, or at least the Greek public’s perception of this, is important in explaining the wave of vehement anti-Americanism that dominated the Greek domestic scene during, and especially after, the military dictatorship and the Cyprus debacle that followed. A plethora of studies have examined the cultural and political roots of anti-Americanism in Greece and almost all of the many differing views point to the importance that the Greek public attached to the US stance before and during the junta years.²⁹ Although recent research has debunked the myth that the USA gave a green light to the coup that brought the brutish junta to power, the majority of Greeks believed the contrary.³⁰ This was to be highlighted in a memorandum to the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger: ‘The visits to Greece of high-ranking US military officers during this period [junta], the official visit of Vice-President Spyro Agnew, the agreement of home porting and the absence of any strong criticism of the military regime by the USA’ exacerbated the feeling of anti-Americanism among Greeks.³¹ Similarly, the Greek foreign minister, George Mavros, in discussion with Helmut Schmidt, the German chancellor, was to say dramatically that ‘every Greek [is] convinced that the Greek dictatorship was supported by the USA’.³²

The transition to democracy in Greece was taking place, therefore, in a climate of acute ambivalence. The new leadership in Athens was under great domestic pressure to act when confronted with the grave consequences of the double Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The new prime minister concluded, however, that the option of war against Turkey would be a parlous course to follow since seven years of the junta had left both of the country’s frontiers unprotected and the army in disorder. Moreover, Karamanlis had to satisfy people’s growing thirst for the country’s independence from foreign interference, and to achieve this meant ‘reducing Greece’s reliance upon the USA and NATO, at least on the surface’.³³ The dilemma for Karamanlis was, however, that as long as Turkey remained the primary threat, any moves to isolate Greece from the USA and NATO would only benefit the Turks. The new government had to perform a careful balancing act.

Instead of taking the path to war with Turkey, Karamanlis chose to withdraw from the military command of NATO on 14 August 1974, and he requested also that formal negotiations should begin on the future of US bases and facilities on Greek soil.³⁴ In the years that followed, he accounted for his decision by saying that ‘the withdrawal from NATO was not only justified but necessary. The fury of the Greek and Cypriot people was so great at that time that the only alternative would have been war.’³⁵ Equally, the then foreign minister, Dimitris Bitsios, a close associate of Karamanlis, revealed in his memoirs that ‘Karamanlis had to choose. Either to declare war on Turkey or to leave NATO. Between the two he chose the lesser evil’.³⁶

This decision, made at the height of the Cyprus crisis, reflected the frustration of the Greeks at the failure of the USA and its NATO allies to forestall Turkish military action. The French ambassador to Athens, Roland de Margerie, said that ‘if Karamanlis, who could not be a greater NATO advocate, took the decision to withdraw Greek forces from the integrated NATO military operation, the Greeks must really be bitter at the Alliance in general and the USA, in particular’.³⁷ Karamanlis’ decision met with enthusiastic support from the Greek press. One newspaper, reflecting the general feeling of the population, described the decision as ‘bold, manly and called for by the circumstances and met with nationwide approval’.³⁸ It had become by now a widespread conviction among the Greek public that controlling foreign interference would be one of the primary preconditions for building a strong pluralist democracy.³⁹ Or, as Karamanlis put it in a private letter to a close friend, ‘the establishment of a democratic regime required a fundamental change in Greece’s relationship with the USA’.⁴⁰

The fact that during this period Karamanlis turned towards Europe has been interpreted widely as a search for a US substitute.⁴¹ However, records clearly show that even though he pursued a European path and withdrew from NATO, he did not denounce the country’s relationship with the USA. Instead, he opted for a multilateral foreign policy, signalling a disengagement from the rigid approaches of the past.⁴² His multilateralism, however, did not mean ending the close relationship between Greece and the USA.⁴³ Greece was still a Cold War frontline state in need of US security and protection, and Karamanlis was nothing if not pragmatic, keenly aware both of political realities and of the limitations of the EEC’s security capabilities.⁴⁴

While there were potential security dimensions regarding integration into Western Europe for Greeks to consider, an analysis of archival sources shows that other political considerations were to predominate. As the leader of a small country with relatively feeble domestic institutions, Karamanlis was sure in his belief that, alongside the creation of a legitimate governmental climate and economic modernisation, the Greeks needed to join the EEC to build a solid democracy.⁴⁵ Thus the main reason behind Greece’s decision to gain European membership was to use this as a political instrument to strengthen democratisation and reduce the risks of any return to military regimes. Karamanlis was convinced that the association with the EEC and eventual membership would facilitate the strengthening of democratic institutions, accelerate the introduction of political and social reforms and, most importantly, ‘render the establishment of a liberal democratic model irreversible’.⁴⁶ From the very beginning, therefore, the Greek foreign policy commitment to gaining membership of the EEC was enmeshed in the politics of democratic transition in Greece.⁴⁷

On 22 August 1974, just a few days after the Karamanlis government took office, Greece requested f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Democracy and European Integration: Greece’s Strategy of Democratisation
• 2. Why Did the Nine Say ‘Yes’?
• 3. And the Talks Kick Off
• 4. Stagnation
• 5. Closing the Gap
• 6. The German Presidency: The Race against Time
• 7. Unfinished Business
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Sources
• Index