Enlargement as economic policy? The role of the Southern European enlargement in the economic transformations of the European Community in the 1980s
During my stay at LMU, I will work on preparing a book based on the content of my PhD thesis on the negotiations for the Spanish accession to the European Communities. Historians have traditionally portrayed Spain’s accession negotiations as a political process focused on consolidating the fragile democratic system and promoting political stability and social cohesion, with EC’s agro-budgetary problems in the first half of 1980 being the major obstacle to this overall objective. In examining both the political and economic dimensions of those negotiations, I shed new light on the way Spain joined the EC, a negotiating process that was not only confined to the political transition of the candidate toward a democratic regime but that posed serious economic challenges and opportunities with large implications both for Spain and the EC. This book will explore the legacies of EC-Spain relations under the Francoist regime, the importance of the Spanish industrial market liberalization, and the implications of the Spanish accession for creating the Common Fisheries Policy, among other important subjects. In doing so, this research allows me to examine Spain’s accession not only as part of the Southern enlargement but also as a case study at the heart of the major economic transformations of the EC in the 1980s.
In addition, I will further shape my next research project aimed to expand the research done so far by broadening the perspective geographically and chronologically; it will assess the enlargement of the three Southern European candidates and will cover a chronological period from 1979 to 1992. This project will investigate the EC’s southern enlargement as an economic policy tool used by EC bureaucrats and ministers to manage economic challenges such as crisis and globalization endemic to the last decades of the twentieth century. The enlargement of the EC’s geographical borders southward added 55 million new consumers to the Common Market, opened new industrial markets (namely in Spain), increased the intra-EC trade flows, investment opportunities, cheaper labor sources, and expanded commercial ties with other world regions. This project will examine several aspects: how these changes were conceived as tools to generate welfare gains for the EC economy, how specific EC policy areas were influenced by the prospect of the physical enlargement of the market, or how did European policymakers translate the opportunities of the market expansion into practical measures to boost foreign trade. This project aims to bring together the history of European economic integration, the history of globalization, and the economic history of Europe.
Biographical Note
Marta Alorda has recently obtained her Ph.D. in History and Civilization at the European University Institute. She holds a BA in Economics (Pompeu Fabra University) and a Master of Research in Economic History (University of Barcelona). She currently works as a Research Assistant on the EURECON project at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests include the history of European integration, enlargement history, EC political economy, history of globalization, and international economic history.