Shaping pan-European cooperation in the 1970s : Soviet initiatives and the EEC-Nine's response

Abstract

This chapter adds to the historiographical debate on Europe and European integration within and beyond the Cold War by taking into consideration global economic and financial interdependence. It focuses on the EEC's response to Soviet initiatives that, throughout the 1970s, called for the development of pan-European economic cooperation: the CSCE, the EEC/Comecon negotiations, and multilateral cooperation in the fields of energy, transport, and the environment. Soviet initiatives and the EEC's response are considered within regional processes and new international economic trends, such as the affirmation of the post-industrial consumer-based era and the growing global economic interdependence, which affected the Western capitalist countries and the Eastern socialist states alike. It is argued that two visions of pan-European cooperation confronted each other: the Soviet and the EEC-Nine's. The Community and its member states collectively took a pro-active stance aimed at promoting new intra-European relations beyond the Cold War order, and successfully set pan-European cooperation on EEC terms.