Abstract
Early in the morning of 12 June 1975, just a few days after the ratification of the new Greek constitution, Constantinos Karamanlis’ government submitted a formal application for Greece to join the EEC. The Greek ambassador to the EEC, Stephanos Stathatos, sent the formal request to the president of the Council of Ministers, the Irish minister of foreign affairs, Gareth Fitzgerald. On the same day, Karamanlis informed the ambassadors of the nine member states of the Community that
Greece belongs and desires to belong in Europe, with which it has been connected for a long time in many ways — politically, economically and historically. Today’s initiative constitutes a natural continuity of the policy I inaugurated 15 years ago & Greece does not desire full membership solely on economic grounds. The reasons are mainly political and refer to the consolidation of democracy and the future of the nation.1
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Notes
For example, Antonis Klapsis, ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy: US-Greek relations at a Critical Turning Point: 1974–1975’, Mediterranean Quarterly, 22:1 (2011), 61–73.
Part of this new multilateral approach was the opening to the Balkans and Moscow. See more in Eirini Karamouzi, ‘Managing the “Helsinki Spirit” in the Balkans: Greece’s Initiative for Balkan Cooperation, 1975–1976’, Diplomacy & Statecraft (2013), 24:4, 597–618
Lykourgos Kourkouvelas, ‘Détente as a Strategy: Greece and the Communist World, 1974–1979’, International History Review (2013), 35:5, 1052–1067.
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© 2014 Eirini Karamouzi
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Karamouzi, E. (2014). Democracy and European Integration: Greece’s Strategy of Democratisation. In: Greece, the EEC and the Cold War, 1974–1979. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137331335_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137331335_2
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