ABSTRACT
From the mid-1960s onwards, the issue of obtaining access to the market of the European Economic Community provoked sharp debates within Hungarian elite groups. Using records from the Ministry of Foreign Trade, inter-ministerial bodies and the Hungarian National Bank, the chapter demonstrates the discrepancy between Hungary’s foreign policy and its foreign trade policy. On the one hand, Budapest initiated actions to improve pan-European cooperation, and by the end of the 1970s its foreign policy showed autonomy from Moscow. On the other hand, Hungarian trade policy remained ambiguous and ineffective in its relations with the EEC, since Budapest, which adopted new measures, never dared to break away from the agreed position of non-recognition pushed by the Soviets and adopted by the socialist bloc. The chapter also reveals an internal political struggle where national interest confronted ideological doctrine; in the early 1980s, the foreign trade apparatus of the state remained determined to uphold Hungary’s contractual commercial rights, while the young members of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party sought to shift from the outdated standpoint. Yet going openly against the Soviet position remained a taboo.
