In parallel with the volatile growth in East-West trade in the first half of the 1970s the new forms of cooperation between Western firms and socialist enterprises in Eastern Europe became increasingly important. By the end of the 1970s, however, the expansion of industrial East-West cooperation had already lost its impetus. Hungary's political relations with all the Western industrialized nations have been fairly good despite the general deterioration in the climate between East and West. The marked downward trend in industrial cooperation has further increased the overall significance of the cooperation project with Fiat of Italy which was in any case the largest project between Poland and the West. The drop in cooperation-linked imports reflects Poland's desperate attempts to reduce imports in order to conserve hard currency despite the detrimental consequences for Poland's industrial output and export capacity. Political conditions in the 1970s certainly favoured the expansion and intensification of East-West industrial cooperation.