ABSTRACT
Western Europe, which for some years had tried to engender economic integration under the auspices of the OEEC, suddenly splintered into three separate, and highly disparate, economic camps of the Six, the Seven and the peripherals by 1959. The latter grouping was astutely termed the 'Forgotten Five' by Miriam Camps in her authoritative Britain and the European Communities.' As May 1959 came to a close, the predicament in which Ireland found itself in relation to the newly-proposed EFTA was a rather straightforward, albeit highly perturbing, one. Indeed, at that particular stage, it was publicly declared that Ireland would not be invited or be permitted to be present at the forthcoming meeting of the Seven in Stockholm, not even as an observer. The EFTA negotiators - prime amongst them the governments of Sweden and the UK - were exceedingly adamant about this point, in fact, basically because they felt that 'no good purpose would be served at present by having observers in the attendance'.2 Thus, Ireland had essentially been fobbed off by the Seven, but it was not alone in that. In reality, what was then being made crystally clear was the fact that the negotiation proceedings behind EFTA's formation, which had secretly been going on in Geneva since November 1958, would be continuing without the participation of any of the peripherals.
