The European Community’s Relations with the Soviet Union (1973-1991)

Abstract

The dissertation gives an unprecedented historical account of EC-USSR relations, thereby focusing on the perspective of Brussels. From 1958 to 1972, the European Economic Community (EEC) permitted its member states to handle trade with the USSR on a bilateral basis. In 1973, this changed, and the European Commission would oversee trade, forcing Moscow, which had until then refrained from even unofficially acknowledging the European integration project, to the negotiation table. These negotiations would drag on, often without any results. By the late 1970s, the Commission under the presidency of Roy Jenkins would target surplus production in the EC (mostly dairy productions) to sell at a subsidised price to the USSR. Relations started to improve, and meetings between EC and Soviet officials became more recurrent. However, an EC committed to becoming a political player in global affairs could not ignore the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan or Moscow pressurising the Polish government into imposing martial law in the country. For the first time, the EC decided to sanction the USSR, albeit minimally, causing EC-USSR relations to be put on hold. When Gorbachev came to power, his policies changed the decade-old opposition from Moscow to the EC, and by the late 1980s, an EC-USSR trade deal had been signed. In the final years of the USSR, Brussels granted Gorbachev financial aid, hoping it would help Gorbachev’s reforms and prevent the USSR from collapsing. The dissertation asks explicitly how the European Commission handled EC-USSR relations. How an ever more political community of European states reacted to significant geopolitical events will enlighten the reader on the first steps of an attempt at EC external relations. A more minor research question is whether we should question the notion of détente as stemming largely from the Helsinki Accords.