Spain and Portugal acceded to the European Community, now the European Union, in 1986. This was the third enlargement of the Communities, following on from the 1973 and 1981 enlargements. Their accessions are considered to be a part of the broader Mediterranean enlargement of the European Union.
Spain and Portugal did not have a Referendum related to European Union accession.
Both countries had been under dictatorships until just over a decade prior to the accession, with Spain under the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and Portugal under the corporatist dictatorship of the . This had meant that, whilst both countries had previously had relationships with the Communities in some form or another, they were ineligible to become members. The mid-1970s brought the death of Franco in Spain, and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which rapidly pushed both countries towards democracy. Membership talks began with both countries a few years later.
Spain and Portugal acceded to the Communities on 1 January 1986. The accession took place without any official ceremony other than the raising of the Spanish and Portuguese flags in Brussels, after a period of more than six years of negotiations between the Communities and the two countries. The accession talks were particularly prolonged by concerns over the Spanish fishing fleet, which was larger than the entire Community fleet put together, as well as severe governmental turbulence in Portugal, where several governments collapsed and one prime minister died in an aeroplane crash during the negotiations.
Some scholars at the time predicted that increased competition from Europe would lead to economic problems for Spain and Portugal; however, in the years since, both countries' economies have benefited overall from the accession. The enlargement is also credited by some with helping to stabilise the fledgling democracies of both countries, as well as speeding up the decolonisation of the Portuguese Empire; whilst there is broadly consensus that membership played some role in these processes, there remains debate as to whether membership was the deciding factor in these changes, or whether it merely contributed.
History Spain
Relations under Franco Spain first applied for association with the European Economic Community (EEC), the general economic arm of the three European Communities, on 10 February 1962. The country was ineligible for full membership as a direct consequence of its dictatorship; whilst there was no specific provision in the treaty establishing the EEC requiring that Member States be democracies, the European Parliament made clear just months after the application that an undemocratic Spain would never have any relationship negotiated "closer than a commercial treaty", with further European integration in mind.
The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe passed a resolution by 70 votes to 31 in its 14th ordinary session in May 1962 calling for members of the EEC to "examine the possibility of some form of economic agreement between Spain and the Community, bearing in mind the constitutional changes that will be necessary before any form of political association can be contemplated". However, the application caused some controversy; a number of members of the European Parliament questioned whether the application was acceptable, given Spain's dictatorship.
With the question of association still unresolved by 1964, the head of the Spanish mission to the EEC sent another letter on 14 February renewing the request for association status. Talks were subsequently scheduled to begin in the autumn of that year. Eventually, in 1967, the Council of the EEC approved a mandate for the commission to negotiate with Spain, and a trade agreement was signed in June 1970. However, this was a trade preference agreement, as opposed to an association agreement; this meant only reciprocity in trade concessions, as opposed to the economic development assistance and the possibility of eventual full membership that was granted through association status to, for instance, Greece and Turkey. Discussions remained in the 1970s about what the future relationship between the EEC and Spain might look like, after the formation of an EEC–Spain joint committee.
The Spanish transition and applying for Community membership
Following the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who had ruled over the country for 36 years, and the beginnings of the Spanish transition to democracy, rumours had been circulating for some time in 1977 about the possibility of a Spanish request for membership of the EEC. On 26 July, the new democratic government of Spain led by Adolfo Suárez wrote three letters to the President of the Council of Ministers of the European Communities, Henri Simonet, each requesting the admission of Spain to each different European Community. These letters were hand-delivered by the Foreign Minister of Spain, Marcelino Oreja, to the President of the European Commission, Roy Jenkins, in Brussels on 28 July 1977.
At the time, significant concerns were raised with regards to whether or not Spain would be accepted into the EEC. Spanish press talked of a potential veto from France and Italy against its accession, on the basis of the potential threat it would pose to their agricultural sectors. However, more than a year after the application was made, after extensive consultation and negotiation with existing Member States, the European Commission published in November 1978 an official opinion on Spain's application for membership. The opinion recommended that membership negotiations begin, but noted that the process to becoming a member of the EEC was likely to be a slow one, citing both financial and bureaucratic barriers.
Membership negotiations On 5 February 1979, negotiations were opened between Spain and the European Council – the committee of leaders of the Member States of the European Communities. Roy Jenkins declared during a speech at the opening of the negotiations that "Spain is a part of Europe, and Europe is incomplete without Spain".
An attempted coup d'état in Spain in February 1981, in which elements of the Spanish Civil Guard attempted to remove the democratically elected government from office, represented a significant point of international attention during the membership negotiations. The EEC was no exception to this, expressing its concern about the unfolding events. The attempt was unsuccessful, and following its failure, the European Council met on 23–24 March 1981. It subsequently released a statement expressing its "great satisfaction at the reaction of the King, the government, and the Spanish people, faced by recent attacks against the democratic system of their country". Felipe González, the leader of the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, went on a tour of Western Europe in March of the same year to "urge" nations to admit Spain to the EEC "as quickly as possible"; the EEC was, according to a Spanish diplomat speaking in 1982, seen as "a synonym for democracy" among the population. In spite of this, the speed of the negotiations was not significantly increased by the events.
A year later, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party were elected into government following the 1982 Spanish general election, making González the Prime Minister. Prior to the election, Spanish negotiations with the Communities had reportedly stalled; this was not only due to the coup attempt, but also thanks to opposition from the French government over concerns related to the Common Agricultural Policy leading to greater competition from Spain. González once again put emphasis on the EEC during his election campaign, and at the same time downplayed the issue of Spanish membership of NATO, which had been a controversial issue within the debate about opening Spain up to the world for a number of years.
Concerns were also raised over the potential impact of Spain's accession in particular on the operation of the Common Fisheries Policy. The Spanish fishing fleet was larger than the entire fleet of the existing Community members put together, which had presented an issue in a similar manner during the negotiation of an interim agreement on fishing between Spain and the Community. It was evident during the Spanish negotiations for admission that Spain had become more responsive to the fishing sector, as a consequence of the high propensity of illegal fishing leading to fishermen "mobilising as a socio-occupational group". The Spanish Act of Accession eventually devoted fifty of its pages to fisheries-related matters, around 10% of the entire treaty.
Beginning to tire of the long negotiations by December 1983, the French government requested a deadline be imposed on the accession talks, proposing 30 September 1984 as the date. The French government continued applying pressure in favour of this deadline into 1984, and it was agreed to by the Member States at the March 1984 Brussels Summit of the European Council. However, the agreed deadline was not met, with questions over fishing, agriculture and steel still remaining by the end of September, and more negotiations scheduled beyond the deadline. At the end of October 1984, a commitment was made that Spain and Portugal would join the Communities on 1 January 1986, although there remained "difficulties" still in a number of areas of the negotiations. This commitment was confirmed by a vote at the European Council summit on 3 December 1984, so long as "final negotiations [were] successful".
Portugal Relations under the
In July 1959, just over a year after the EEC was established, the government of Portugal began the process of establishing a diplomatic mission to it, and to Euratom the same month. However, Portugal considered its "multi-continental structure" (in reference to its many overseas colonies) to be incompatible with EEC membership; even had it wished to join, its contemporary dictatorship would have made an accession difficult to impossible.
In spite of these factors, Portugal was a founding member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which was initially aimed to compete with the EEC as a European common economic zone. EFTA, constituting something closer to a pure free trade zone than the EEC, was a more palatable prospect at the time for Portugal than taking on the full rules and regulations of the EEC. At the time of the organisation's foundation in 1960, Portugal was still under the corporatist dictatorship, led by António de Oliveira Salazar; a year later, the government of Portugal published a report decrying the decision taken by members of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation to establish the EEC "without consulting their partners in the Organisation", and saying that "The Portuguese Government is once again convinced that the spirit of understanding and solidarity that underpinned the establishment and operation of the European Free Trade Association will prevail".