Joining the Club: Reflections from the Iberian Integration in Light of the New Enlargement to Eastern Europe. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 2 No. 5, March 2003

Royo, Sebastián. (2003) Joining the Club: Reflections from the Iberian Integration in Light of the New Enlargement to Eastern Europe. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 2 No. 5, March 2003. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

(From the introduction). After decades of relative isolation under authoritarian regimes, the success of processes of democratic transition in Portugal and Spain in the second half of the 1970s paved the way for full membership in the European Community. For Spain, Portugal, and their European Community (EC) partners this momentous and long awaited development had profound consequences and set in motion complex processes of adjustment. (1) There was no dispute that the Iberian countries belonged to Europe. This was not just a geographical fact. Spain and Portugal shared their traditions, their culture, their religion, and their intellectual values with the rest of Europe. Moreover, both countries had historically contributed to the Christian occidental conceptions of mankind and society dominant in Europe. Without Portugal and Spain the European identity would only be a reflection of an incomplete body. Iberian countries belonged to Europe. Their entry into the European Community was a reaffirmation of that fact, and it would enable both countries to recover their own cultural identity, lost since the Treaty of Utrecht, if not before. The Iberian enlargement strengthened Europe’s strategic position in the Mediterranean and Latin America, and led to the further development of a European system of cohesion and solidarity. Spain and Portugal offered a new geo-political dimension to the Union, strengthening it southwards, and ensuring closer ties with other regions that had been peripheral to the EC. This process was fostered with Spain’s accession to NATO on June 1982, after a long controversy within the country. (2) The purpose of this paper is to use the experience of Portugal and Spain in the European Union (EU) as an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to both countries since 1986 and draw some lessons from the Iberian experiences that may be applicable to Eastern European countries. This paper will identify the basic changes in the economies and societies of Portugal and Spain that occurred as a result of European integration.

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