The EEC's Yugoslav Policy in Cold War Europe, 1968-1980

Benedetto Zaccaria

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137579782
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Moderne Geschichte

The disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s is often described as the starting-point of the EEC/EU involvement in Western Balkan politics, as if no political relations had developed between the EEC and Yugoslavia during the Cold War era. Instead, this book shows that the origin of EEC-Yugoslav relations must be placed in the crucial decade of the 1970s. Contrary to received opinion, this work demonstrates that relations between the EEC and Yugoslavia were grounded on a strong political rationale which was closely linked to the evolution of the Cold War in Europe and the Mediterranean. The main argument is that relations between the two parties were primarily influenced by the need to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence in the Balkans and to foster détente in Europe.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Benedetto ZaccariaThe EEC’s Yugoslav Policy in Cold War Europe, 1968-1980Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World10.1057/978-1-137-57978-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Benedetto Zaccaria¹

(1)

Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy

End Abstract

According to received opinion, the involvement of the EEC/EU in the political dynamics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and its successor states goes back to the early 1990s, when Community representatives struggled to manage the violent disintegration of the Yugoslav federation through diplomatic mediation and economic countermeasures.¹ Conversely, the EEC’s Yugoslav policy in Cold War Europe has been dismissed as one of neglect and ignorance of the country’s fragile situation, based on a view of Yugoslavia as a simple economic partner and exporter of labour.² It seems that the story of this relationship may not even deserve to be told. As noted by the German scholar Rafael Biermann, the number of studies devoted to EEC/EU involvement in the Western Balkans after 1991—the year when Croatia and Slovenia issued their declarations of independence, sanctioning and sanctifying the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation—contrasts with the almost total lack of historical analysis of EEC-Yugoslav relations during the preceding years.³

The present work, based on multi-archival and multi-national research, offers a new interpretation which contrasts with the above-mentioned view. Contrary to received opinion, it highlights the fact that the EEC’s Yugoslav policy was not only a matter of economic relations, nor was it based on a policy of neglect. Although the public sphere of this relationship did regard the economic sphere, this was nothing but the tip of the iceberg. Under the surface of the water lay the delicate, low-profile rapprochement between two differing political and economic systems, which was influenced by the Cold War environment in which it first developed. This work proves that the EEC’s active involvement in the Yugoslav question goes back to the 1970s. During this decade, the development of bilateral relations was impressive. In 1970 and 1973, the parties concluded two trade agreements, which represented unique examples of rapprochement between capitalist and socialist realities. In 1976, they signed a joint declaration which established the political foundation for bilateral relations. In April 1980, they concluded a broad cooperation agreement which would regulate the relationship between the parties until the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991.

The aim of this book is to examine the political rationale underpinning the Community’s attitude towards Yugoslavia in the course of the 1970s, that is, the formative decade of EEC-Yugoslav relations. It demonstrates that this relationship was grounded on a clearly defined political rationale which was closely linked to the evolution of the Cold War in Europe and the Mediterranean. The main argument is that the EEC’s Yugoslav policy was primarily influenced and constrained by the need to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence in the Balkans and to foster détente in Europe.

As noted above, on the specific subject of EEC-Yugoslav relations during the Cold War years, the literature is very limited. The few existing studies on this theme go back to the late 1970s and early 1990s.⁴ Due to the ‘thirty-year rule’ regulating the opening of state archives in most Western European countries, these works were neither based on a historical approach nor on primary archival sources. Focusing on the ‘public’ dimension of relations between Community Brussels and Belgrade—which concerned trade and economic cooperation—they highlighted Yugoslavia’s difficulty in exporting its agricultural and industrial output to the EEC market, and Belgrade’s growing trade deficit vis-à-vis the EEC member states throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Accordingly, these studies proposed for the first time the idea that the EEC had been carrying out a policy of neglect and blind protectionism towards Yugoslavia.⁵ Yet they did not consider political progress in EEC-Yugoslav relations or the Cold War constraints influencing this relationship. Nor did they highlight the leading actors in the development of the EEC’s Yugoslav policy, and they failed to address the peculiar role played by the Community and its institutions. In fact, published sources often neglect what actually took place behind closed doors. Even the articles published in the special issue of the Journal of European Integration History (2004), which was entirely devoted to the Community’s attitude towards the demise of Yugoslavia, concentrated only on the period between the late 1980s and mid-1990s, without offering a systematic analysis of the historical roots of EEC-Yugoslav relations.⁶ Only in 2013 did the Serbian scholar Branislav Radeljić publish a volume entitled Europe and the Collapse of Yugoslavia, which partly addressed the subject of EEC-Yugoslav relations during the Cold War years. However, his approach may be described as teleological, in that he described the unfolding of EEC-Yugoslav relations with the benefit of hindsight, and only in view of Yugoslavia’s tragic demise in 1991. In line with studies published thirty years earlier, Radeljić argued that Yugoslavia was ignored by the EEC until the actual outbreak of inter-republic confrontations.⁷

The present work is thus the first systematic historical account of the origin of EEC-Yugoslav relations in the Cold War era. Drawing on a Community-centred approach, it concentrates on how the interaction between EEC institutions, member states and Yugoslav representatives in both Brussels and Belgrade led to the constant development of the EEC’s Yugoslav policy. This policy was not fixed, but always in a state of flux. It was the result of a decision-making process involving several actors, and changed according to the evolution of European-integration dynamics and the Cold War.⁸ Indeed, in the case of the EEC policy towards Yugoslavia, these historical processes were two sides of the same coin.

As regards European integration, this work supports the view that the Community’s rapprochement to Yugoslavia was a political action conceived as part of the emerging ambition of the EEC to become an international actor with a well-defined identity.⁹ The story told here developed against the background of a profound transformation of integration patterns in Western Europe, which evolved from an economic to a political dimension.¹⁰ In December 1969, the intergovernmental summit at The Hague had marked the re-launch of the integration process in several policy fields, under the triptych of ‘enlargement, completion, deepening’.¹¹ Within this framework, the EEC aimed at emerging as an international actor with a well-defined identity.¹² In the 1970s, the development of the international détente contributed towards altering the rigid bipolar equilibrium created in the aftermath of World War II, so that the EEC could enhance its international role in the fields of multilateral trade negotiations, European détente, the dialogue between developed and developing countries, and political stabilisation of the Mediterranean basin.¹³

The field in which the Community could deploy its international action was that of international trade, in which the EEC had direct competencies according to the Common Commercial Policy (CCP), as expressed in Arts. 110–116 of the Treaty of Rome of March 1957. In this sphere, the complex bargaining process between the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, and COREPER, the Committee of Permanent Representatives responsible for preparing the work of the Council, resulted in the adoption of Community decisions regarding the opening, negotiation and conclusion of trade agreements with non-member countries. The Community could thereby emerge on the international scene as a single entity and be recognised as such by its partners.¹⁴ This work pays special attention to the interaction of the Community’s intergovernmental and supranational dimensions. Regarding the latter, it focuses on the European Commission, its commissioners in charge of external relations, and its officials in the Directorate General for External Relations (DG I) and External Trade (DG XI), who, according to the founding treaties, played the pivotal role of preparing and negotiating trade agreements and acted as true international representatives of the EEC.

As regards the intergovernmental dimension, research highlights how the interests and individual standpoints of the EEC member states were conveyed and discussed within the frameworks of COREPER and the Council itself, in order to explain the broader choices and strategies adopted at the Community level. This work takes into particular account the attitude adopted by Italy, the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the UK within the Community framework. During the period under scrutiny, Italy and the FRG were Yugoslavia’s major trade partners in Western Europe. Both pursued active national policies towards Yugoslavia. In particular, Rome was interested in regulating the question of the Italo-Yugoslav border in the area near Trieste, which had not been definitively answered by the 1947 Peace Treaty or the 1954 Memorandum of London.¹⁵ Bonn, instead, included Yugoslavia within the framework of its broader Ostpolitik and, during the late 1970s, its profound interest in the stabilisation of Southern Europe.¹⁶ France and the UK had paid special attention to the Balkan area since the early Cold War years and, although having different goals, exerted a prominent role in the definition and implementation of Western security strategies in the Balkan and Mediterranean regions during the 1970s.¹⁷

Despite analysis of these different national positions, the book’s main focus concentrates on the EEC as such, considered as the original product, and not the mere arithmetical sum, of its member states’ foreign policies and the individual preferences of the EEC institutions, the European Commission in primis. ¹⁸ The book therefore explores the factors which allowed the emergence of an innovative diplomatic framework within Community Brussels, based on cooperation, rather than confrontation, between the supranational instances of the European Commission and the national prerogatives of the individual member states.¹⁹

As noted above, the second process explored in this work is that of the Cold War in Europe and the Mediterranean. By virtue of their historical roots, both the EEC and Yugoslavia could not be immune to the evolution of the East–West confrontation. The origins of the Community go back to the division of the European continent into two opposing blocs after World War II. Its establishment in 1957, after the signing of the Treaty of Rome between France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, was consistent with the long-standing interest of both the USA and its Western European partners in fostering economic and political stability in the western part of the divided continent and, therefore, facing the Soviet challenge through the promotion of economic prosperity.²⁰ In other words, the Community was one of the major pillars of the Western system, and was regarded as such by Moscow and its Eastern European satellites until the very end of the Cold War.

In turn, Yugoslavia’s internal and external positions had been intimately involved in the unfolding of the superpowers’ confrontation since immediately after World War II. After the rupture between Stalin and Tito in 1948, mainly determined by the Yugoslav leader’s unwillingness to comply with Moscow’s hegemonic plans in Eastern Europe,²¹ Yugoslavia emerged as the first Communist regime in Europe to be formally detached from the Soviet system. However, the rift with Moscow did not automatically imply Yugoslavia’s entry into the Western sphere of influence. After 1948, Yugoslavia occupied a hybrid position between the two blocs into which Cold-War Europe was divided. This was reflected in Belgrade’s engagement within the non-aligned movement, which had represented the main pillar of Yugoslavia’s foreign policy since the early 1960s.²²

Analysis of how the evolution of the Cold War in the 1970s influenced the course of EEC-Yugoslav relations will be structured by three main questions. The first is the problem of Balkan and Mediterranean stability: the 1970s were indeed affected by political instability on the Mediterranean scene and by Western fears that the Soviet Union might advance its presence in the regions. Yugoslavia’s strategic position constituted an asset for the West which, however, could have swiftly turned into a liability should Belgrade have at any time abandoned its autonomous international course. Indeed, behind this first question, there lay a second problem: that of Yugoslavia’s transition from the ‘Tito’ to the ‘post-Tito’ era. The Yugoslav leader was born in 1892, and during the 1970s his age and precarious health represented a problem for the West: what would happen after Tito had gone? Would the post-Tito leadership continue to maintain Yugoslavia’s equilibrium between the two blocs, or would it surrender to the sirens of the Soviet Union, which, in Western eyes, had never abandoned its goal of drawing Yugoslavia back to Soviet ...