ABSTRACT
The immediate relevance of the work to research is the light it throws on the assumption that extension of the Community, or association with it, depended after 1961 on the United Kingdom’s success in winning membership. Austria’s negotiations for association, which would have been almost full membership, took little account of de Gaulle’s veto against the United Kingdom in 1963. The explicit Soviet comparison was with Switzerland, and so was that made by those Austrian politicians who were themselves uneasy about the approach to the Community. Austria’s version of same qui peur was the equally divisive negotiations of the 1960s, which delayed a clear definition of neutrality and left investors and exporters in a state of prolonged uncertainty caused by the effect of the failure of the negotiations for association on the Austrian economy.
