ABSTRACT
East-West relations directly affected the negotiations over United Kingdom (UK) membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). The contingencies of detente and bloc confrontation formed the framework within which the central players in the negotiations - the UK, France and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) - approached the question of the UK's relationship to the EEC during the crucial period leading to Britain's decision to apply for membership. A reinvigorated Western Europe bolstered by a NATO-European nuclear capability would transform East-West relations, and in particular Germany's role within them. Since economic and financial arrangements were central to the military efforts of the partners in NATO, it should come as no surprise that bargaining over the economic arrangements under negotiation at Brussels involved an element of conflict over the goals of NATO policy. Furthermore, the impact of apparent attempts by the UK government to concede to the Communists over East Germany made the UK look like a traitor to West Germany's cause, while it made de Gaulle seem Germany's saviour. As Europe faced renewed crisis over Berlin in 1961, the role of the European Community in the East-West conflict became a source of increasing difficulties, leading to a diplomatic struggle within the West in which the Anglo-Saxons were if anything less restrained than France and Germany. 1 It was these political issues which determined the fate of the negotiations. The British application was the product of an agonizing reappraisal of the UK's position, faced with pressure to transform itself into a fully fledged 'European power'. At the end of the 1950s, since none of the Europeans were able to control their nation's environment independently, British, French and German leaders all argued that only an effort to pool Western Europe's resources could have given it equality with the United States (US) and restored the Europeans' claim to be an actor in their own right. This common language cloaked considerable divergence between the 'grand designs' of the Western leaders. Their reactions to shifts in the balance of power within the Atlantic Community and to changing relations between the two superpowers conflicted wildly, prompting the three key Europeans to advance competing proposals for the reorganization of political and economic relations within the Atlantic Alliance and for the strengthening of Europe as a single actor within the Alliance.
