Crisis and stabilization in Southern Europe during the 1970s: Western strategy, European instruments

Abstract

During the early 1970s the European Community was characterised by some relevant developments. The Hague summit conference, held in December 1969, marked a renewed "re-launching of Europe" that concurred in changing some of the European construction's previous patterns. The enlargement led to the end of the so-called "Europe of the Six", or "petite Europe", a fairly homogeneous group that for about twenty years had been the standardbearer of the integration process, based on the functionalist approach. The "completion" favoured the creation of a unified Community budget that became autonomous from the member states' decisions. The "deepening" led to the creation of series of new European policies: from the monetary policy to a renewed social policy, from the regional policy to the environmental one. 1 Moreover, although it was not a Community policy, but an intergovernmental one, the "nine" tried also to launch a common foreign policy through the European Political Cooperation (EPC). 2 If till the late 1960s the European integration had been mainly successful in the economic dimension, the member states, owing to the process inaugurated on the occasion of the Hague summit conference, aimed at imposing the European Community as a relevant international actor with a definite "identity". To that end at the Paris summit in October 1972 the "nine" pointed out that social progress was a main goal for the Community, as important as economic development. One year later, in December 1973 at the Copenhagen summit the "nine" issued an official declaration in which it was stated their intention to create a European "political identity". Such ambitious policies were the consequences of some relevant changes that were characterising on one hand Western Europe's economic, political and social balance, on the other hand the wider international arena. As far as the Western European internal context, the period between the late 1960s and the early 1970s was characterised by a turn to the left. In this connection the coming to power in 1969 of the Social Democrats in the German Federal Republic was a major event; moreover the Western European society was largely influenced by the 1968 "social revolution": traditional Western values, on which the early European construction had been based, lost most of their appealing, especially among the younger