ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the deliberations that took place between the Commission, the Council of Foreign Ministers and the European Parliament in dealing with the Greek military dictatorship. The chapter illustrates how the Greek dictatorship rekindled the debate on the issue of democracy within the European Community, initiated by the Birkelbach report of 1962, and how the subsequent decision to freeze the 1961 Association Agreement ultimately contributed to shaping a political identity based on the idea of democracy that had not originally been part of the EEC’s self-image. The debates and disagreements in the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council over Greece’s Association enhanced the idea of the European Community as a community of values with both the right and the duty to uphold democracy within the European continent. It was this legacy that would prove important, not during the dictatorship, but in the period of transition to democracy as, in the eyes of the Greeks, the EEC and the Council of Europe were the only two organizations that had, at least symbolically, denounced the dictatorship – unlike the transatlantic allies.
