Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

Greece, like Ireland, was small and poor and its agriculture posed no threat to French farmers. Thus despite certain institutional impediments—the Orthodox Church had official and influential standing and civil marriage, to take one example, was not permitted until 1992—there were no powerful arguments against its admission, which was championed by French President Giscard d’Estaing among others. But when it came to Portugal and (above all) Spain, the French put up strong opposition. Wine, olive oil, fruit and other farm products cost far less to grow and market south of the Pyrenees; were Spain and Portugal to be admitted to the common European market on equal terms, the Iberian farmers would offer French producers stiff competition. Thus it took nine years for Portugal and Spain to gain entry to the EC (whereas Greece’s application went through in less than six), during which time the public image of France, traditionally positive in the Iberian peninsula, fell steeply: by 1983, two-thirds of the way through an acrimonious series of negotiations, only 39 percent of Spaniards had a ‘favorable’ view of France—an inauspicious beginning to their common future. Part of the problem was that the arrival of the Mediterranean nations entailed more than simply compensating Paris with a further increase in the Community’s support payments to French farmers; between them Spain, Portugal and Greece brought an additional 58 million people into the Community, most of them poor and thus...