ABSTRACT
Apart perhaps from the alarm over the possibility of a divided Western Europe that had surfaced at the birth of the EEC, the Community had in many ways been left free of external pressure or interest to develop as it saw fit. Contained within the bipolar world and sheltering under the Western regional security alliance, it had been able to grow at its own pace, erratic as that may have been. After the late 1970s further expansion was not on the agenda. The EFTA states were not interested in membership, and Eastern Europe was not permitted to be. The 1984 agreement with EFTA seemed to be the maximum that could be achieved in that direction, and although there were contacts with individual governments in Eastern Europe, and in the mid-1980s the beginnings of a dialogue with COMECON, the EC did not have anything that resembled an Eastern European policy.
