Journal of European Integration History – Revue d'histoire de l'

104Fernando GuiraoIIt is indisputable that the Franco regime impeded Spain's EEC membership.According to article 237 of the EEC Treaty membership required the unanimousfavourable vote of the Council of Ministers and parliamentary ratification by allmembers. It was unlikely that Franco Spain would have passed happily throughboth procedures. The opposition to Spain’s membership did not come solely fromabroad, but also from inside the régime itself. When Madrid was forced to adopt afinal position towards the EEC after the British cabinet had made public its desireto enter the Community and the so-called Brussels negotiations for the first EECenlargement opened in the autumn of 1961, any possible participation in the differentstructures of economic integration was conditional upon the maintenance ofSpain's institutional distinctiveness. 5The liability that the Franco regime created for Spain at first was not determinant,because the official intention was to halt the implementation of the Treaty ofRome rather than to join the EEC. From the political viewpoint the conclusion ofthe so-called Messina negotiations frustrated Madrid. The European Coal and SteelCommunity (ECSC) was seen as no threat and all subsequent initiatives thatadopted the Schuman Plan model were pulled into the inter-governmental path, inwhich officials from Madrid were involved. More ambitious projects, such as theEuropean Defence Community and the European Political Community were deadand buried. Once Spain had initiated negotiations for association with the OEEC,the Treaty of Rome implied a blow to the Spanish government's belief that it hadreached a stage where it could envisage an almost full participation in Europeaneconomic bodies. 6 Not surprisingly, then, Spain's active policy towards the EECwas based on the concept of an OEEC-wide free trade area.It was only at the time of formalising Spain's relations with the EEC that thepolitical liability that the Franco regime represented became determinant. The governmentdid not request an association agreement, for fear of rejection. It asked forthe opening of bilateral negotiations for the EEC to establish the most convenientprocedure for putting forward the country's most urgent needs.Compared to other association requests, the Spanish one was very ambiguous. Itis true that the Spanish application included the following sentence: “The territorialcontinuity of my country with the Community and the contribution that its geographicalsituation can make in favour of European cohesion are the reasons thatlead my Government to request an association which may in due time be transformedinto full integration.” The letter opened, however, with the following state-5. Franco's speech in Burgos, 2 October 1961, as reproduced in Pensamiento político de Franco. Antología,Madrid 1975, p. 631.6. For the Spanish perception of the future of economic cooperation following the steps of the ECSCsee, Historical Archive of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Renewed Section), Madrid(MAE), file (Leg.) 3449, folder (exp.) 39: “Informe sobre situación actual de la CECA y sobre susperspectivas dentro del movimiento global de integración europea”, Strasbourg, 5 February 1955;and ibid., exp. 34: Ambassador to Minister of Foreign Affairs, “Nuevas iniciativas de integración europea”,Paris, 30 April 1955.