Portugal and European Integration, 1947-1992: an Essay on Protected Openness in the European Periphery

Abstract

This article analyzes Portugal’s path to European integration by describing the economic policy of the country from 1947 onward; it argues that this policy of state intervention and commercial openness followed the same patterns as those found in other Western European countries even before the revolution of 1974 and accession to the EEC. A backward and dictatorial country emulated the economic policy of democratic and developed countries so that, when it joined the EEC, most trade barriers had already been dismantled. Portugal’s experience sheds light on European integration outside the core group of industrialized European countries and beyond the EEC/EU experience.