Spain and the European Union: a long and desperate accession process

In 1964, 60 years ago, the European Economic Community opened a trap through which the dictatorship, pressure from the United States and black funds from the CIA for bribes could sneak in. Six years later, it achieved a small part of what it had been pursuing since 1962: not the desired integration but an improvised ‘preferential agreement’, not foreseen by the founding Treaty of Rome, of March 25, 1957, which, although it was more than a A mere commercial treaty did not foresee linking it with article 238, which imposed accession as the end of the process, politically impossible in the case of the Franco regime.

On January 15, 1962, the Parliamentary Assembly of the EEC – a purely consultative body at that time – had debated and approved the report.The political and institutional aspects of accession or association to the Community’. It was presented by Willy Birkelbach, deputy of the Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and member of the Political Commission of the EEC Assembly and established the triple condition for accessing the European Communities: geographical, economic and political. This being the one that prevented the entry of Spain. “The guarantee of the existence of a democratic state form, in the sense of a liberal political organization, is a condition for accession (…) Those states whose governments lack democratic legitimation and whose people do not participate in government decisions or directly nor through freely chosen representatives, they cannot claim to be admitted”, in addition to not participating in Western security systems conditions and, therefore, obliged to practice a policy of strict neutrality. It became a preliminary step that states that aspired to become members “recognize the principles that the Council of Europe has set as conditions,” although Birkelbach suggested and it was accepted that those countries that did not comply with the “essential elements to decide on accession” could aspire to some type of economic association with the EEC.