Franco Spain at the Origins of the European Agricultural Community

Chapter 2 shows that Madrid faced serious risks when integration threatened agriculture. A West-European agricultural trade bloc threatened Spain’s economy and political system. Fortunately for Franco Spain, the governments promoting agricultural integration soon deserted supranational features and moved into trade talks to offer other west European countries the surpluses they had generated after 1947. Spain concluded a purchasing contract for wheat with France. This and the prospects of wheat from the International Wheat Agreement and the United States, allowed Madrid to avoid bread rationing after the spring of 1952. By the end of the Green Pool episode, Spain had been granted de facto OEEC treatment in agricultural trade. Thus, the proposed European Agricultural Community provided the Franco regime with the opportunity to improve food consumption and overcome a critical threat to its survival.

Marketing the 1970 Agreement

The basic feature of the 1970 Agreement between the EEC and Spain, Chapter 6 explains, was the negotiated asymmetry in favour of Spain. Franco’s governments succeeded in securing irreversible access to the Common Market, with the most favourable terms possible for a non-EEC country. This was despite the increasing political costs for the Six/Nine and Madrid not having to pay the price of political evolution. The Spanish administration accepted that the Franco regime should evolve but only if the speed and the destination were left up to Madrid. The 1970 Agreement represented a shield granted by the Six in favour of Franco Spain. The Six and the EEC Council and Commission dealt with a relatively weak partner. Meanwhile, Spain faced a set of countries that together formed an omnipotent trading bloc and embodied the highest democratic values. Despite this, Franco’s negotiators succeeded in imposing the essential aspects of their objectives.

Introduction

The title of this book—The European Rescue of the Franco Regime—is not worded to flirt with provocation. It is intended to draw the reader’s attention away from traditional narratives. The thesis widely sustained by scholars and reflected in public opinion is that the institutionalized pattern of European integration contributed to isolate and weaken the political regime that ...

Negotiating the Preference (1967–1970)

Chapter 5 deals with the negotiations between the EEC and Spain from September 1967 to June 1970. Madrid, the weaker party, achieved its requests: first, that Spain’s main export commodities were not discriminated, particularly due to the Common Agricultural Policy; second, that once Spanish industry could export, Spain would have generous access to the Common Market; third, that there should be no reciprocal requirement that Spain open its domestic market to the Six; and finally, that there would be no political conditionality attached. The 1970 Agreement guaranteed lucrative trade preferences for the Spanish economy on the Common Market and also implicitly committed the Six to maintain political stability in Spain. Spaniards persuaded the Six that economic development would make the Spanish political regime evolve towards governance comparable to the rest of Western Europe.

The European Attempt to Topple Spain’s Industrial Protection

The 1970 Agreement was intended to regulate trade relations between the Six and Spain for six years. At the end of 1972, however, Chapter 8 shows, for the Six/Nine the question was no longer that of negotiating additional concessions for Spanish exports but of the inclusion of Spain into the pan-European Free-Trade Area, to begin by 1977. In the summer of 1975, the Spanish Council of Ministers, under the influence of the minister of commerce, refused to ratify the FTA with the EEC. The Spanish government wished to avoid a transformation into a customs union or inclusion in an FTA in which Spanish producers would face mounting competition by West-European producers. The 1970 Agreement remained in force until Spain became a full member of the three European Communities, on 1 January 1986, transforming it into a sort of pre-accession arrangement for which it was not prepared.

The Decision to Grant the Preference (1964–1967)

For the Six, Chapter 4 shows, the Spanish question boiled down to whether they would grant the preference rather than how. Documentary records and trade data show that the EEC did not discriminate against Spanish products. The EEC’s policy on Franco Spain was forged around the justification that relations with dictatorships of less-developed countries served to promote economic development and social change. These changes would naturally lead to a collective desire for political change. France and West Germany acted accordingly and exercised due influence on their peers. In the pursuit of their own interests, the European Community and its member-states opted to induce progressive reform towards West-European institutional standards over punishment or rupture. The political debate was limited to the speed of such changes, not to the validity of the assumption. The Europeanization/democratization binomial implied that closer relations with the EEC would promote convergence towards West-European standards, including democratization.

Schumania and Spain’s Heavy-Industry Supply

The title of this book -The European Rescue of the Franco Regime- intends to draw the reader’s attention away from traditional narratives. The thesis widely sustained by scholars and reflected in public opinion is that the institutionalized pattern of European integration contributed to isolate and weaken the political regime that generalissimo Francisco Franco established after his victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) and headed until his death in November 1975. In Spain, during the struggle for democracy under and immediately following Franco’s dictatorship, membership in the European Communities became emblematic of a collective desire for democratic consolidation and social modernization, as well as the fastest route to elevate the Spanish standard of living in line with Europe’s most advanced societies. This notion of the Europeanization of Spain has made it difficult to conceive the Spanish policy of the European Communities during the Franco era as anything other than a significant element in the combat against Francoism. It is indisputable that the Axis stigma prevented Francoist Spain’s membership to the European Communities. Yet the absence of membership constitutes neither the beginning nor the end, nor even the most important component of the story. From exclusion, a multiplicity of possibilities sprouted, including active support. Although the rescue concept emerged from the analysis of the Six, it could be extended to Franco Spain. The purpose of the Spanish EEC strategy was to generate material prosperity in Spain to maintain the dictatorship’s grip on the country, not to advance the arrival of democracy.

Finale

The Nine failed to establish an industrial free-trade area with Spain and thus to gain access to the Spanish market, the largest west European industrial market outside their direct influence. The decision of the Council of Ministers of the European Communities, in October 1975, to suspend FTA negotiations with Spain, without denouncing the 1970 Agreement, meant the ultimate success of the Spanish government’s politico-economic strategy, the last episode of the European rescue of the Franco regime. The EC Council decision might have been inevitable in terms of public opinion and democratic morality, but it meant to permit Madrid to retain full control over the country’s import policy while fully exploiting the export prospects offered by the 1970 Agreement. In the end, the decision was detrimental for the overall interests of all the parties involved, whether the Spanish population or Western Europe. The final section of this book invites economic historians to estimate the costs of the Spanish EEC policy concerning the inefficient allocation of resources, weak technological transfer, lesser accompanying investment, and limitations to total-factor-productivity increases. Political historians, in turn, should explore what specific interests explain, in each case, why, if official Spanish trade practices in export promotion and import restriction gave the Six every incentive to denounce the 1970 Agreement, apart from obvious political reasons, they did not do so. Finally, scholars dealing with Spanish EEC-membership negotiations should determine the extent at which the Community experience over the 1970 Agreement explains Community attitudes towards some Spanish demands after 1979.

The Spanish Attempt to Expand Unilateral Preferences

After The Hague summit of the European Council in 1969 Madrid calculated that Spain’s terms of access to the Common Market would feasibly improve after the signing ceremony of the 1970 Agreement. The Spanish government was determined to continue the negotiations with the EEC for new concessions. First, the Spanish government battled for the EEC to grant them the benefits of the Generalized System of Preferences, which the French defeated. Second, Madrid requested further preference in agricultural trade, to the point of reaching a quasi-membership status in the CAP, without EEC membership. Third, Madrid pretended to use trade with Eastern Europe and closer relations with the EFTA to place pressure on EEC governments. The three attempts were unsuccessful because, as Chapter 7 shows, no alternative to the EEC existed for Spain to guarantee outlets for Spanish agricultural and industrial produce.

Opposing Fascism or Accommodating Its Last Remnant?

Chapter 3 demonstrates that in the late 1950s, the pro-Europe group in the Spanish administration decided that trade liberalization and European integration were required to assure the survival of the Franco regime. The liberal officials in Madrid were cautious about progressive Europeanization. The official request of February 1962 to open negotiations with the EEC expressed Spain’s goal to obtain a commitment from the Six in favour of the country’s economic development and political evolution at the Franco regime’s desired pace. The official Spanish request brought the Six to assess their responsibility towards Spain’s future economic stability. The critical moment in the European rescue of the Franco regime took place in 1964 when the Six accepted that the Europeanization of Spain should not be limited to solving bilateral disputes, but should address Spain’s place in the future integration of Europe.