The Portuguese Experience of European Integration—A Quantitative Assessment of The Effects of EFTA and EEC Tariff Preferences

Abstract

Portuguese membership of the European Community should be considered as the continuation of a long process of integration with the international economy. Its contemporaneous roots lie in the Portuguese participation into the post-war movement for the liberalisation of trade and payments (1). Partly as a consequence of its early membership of the OEEC, Portugal secured a place in one of the economic blocs that emerged therefrom, and in very favourable conditions. From the very start, the Portuguese membership of EFTA was conceived as a consciously unbalanced arrangement, in which the special needs of a semi-developed, industrialising economy deserved particular treatment. Whereas duty-free access to EFTA markets was granted to Portuguese industrial products and some important food products from 1966 onwards, the tariff liberalisation for those imports that most directly competed with domestic production allowed for a lengthy timetable (tariff removal reached 50 per cent by 1970) and the introduction of infant-industry duties.