For the sake of Yugoslavia. The EEC’s Yugoslav policy in Cold War Europe, 1968-1980

This thesis treats the relationship between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1968 and 1980. It highlights the political importance of EEC/Yugoslav relations within Community’s broader strategies towards the Socialist bloc and the Mediterranean arena, and contextualises this relationship within the Cold War and European integration scenarios. Based on a Community-centred approach, it focuses on the interaction between EEC member states, institutions and officials in Brussels. The Community’s Yugoslav policy during the 1970s has commonly been described as a policy of neglect and faulty ignorance about the country’s fragile internal situation, based on the idea of Yugoslavia as a simple trading partner and exporter of labour. It seems that the story of this relationship does not even deserve to be told. Indeed, the number of studies devoted to EEC/EU policy towards Yugoslavia after the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s contrasts with the almost total lack of historical analysis regarding the preceding years. This thesis offers a new interpretation of EEC/Yugoslav relations during the 1970s. It argues that, from 1968 to 1980, the EEC established firmly based political relations with Yugoslavia, which were primarily determined, and constrained, by the need to prevent the expansion of Soviet influence in the Balkans and to foster détente in Europe. This is the first historical study of EEC/Yugoslav relations based on primary sources from the archives of the EEC institutions, the French, British, German, Italian and former Yugoslav archives, as well as on several collections of personal papers stored in public and private institutions. It represents an important case study examining the evolution of the EEC’s role in the international arena during the 1970s. This work also offers an essential basis for the study of EEC/Yugoslav relations during the 1980s, i.e., the decade which led to the end of the Cold War and the collapse of Yugoslavia.