The Way In

After the political decision was taken and the first application to membership submitted in the summer of 1961, the process of UK accession encountered difficulties in two forms. One was the rejection by de Gaulle of the legitimacy of the UK’s claim to entry (with two vetoes in 1961 and again, to the second UK application in 1967). The other was a less rigid but no less challenging approach to negotiations on the part of the other five founding members. They supported the British cause but had no intention of negotiating any aspect of the existing Acquis Communautaire. While de Gaulle remained, British negotiations depended on his whims that the Five only episodically opposed for fear of losing Paris, as it happened during the empty (French) chair crisis of 1965–66. Its end: the Luxemburg Compromise strengthened the intergovernmental dimension of EC policymaking while, paradoxically, keeping Britain out because of its alleged genetic lack of integrationist commitment. The historiography on this subject is rich and offers a solid background for a reflection on what we now know of ten years of stop-and-go diplomacy of accession. This includes the impact of the state of the economy on the credibility of the UK   application and the role of sterling internationally while on the trajectory of accession. Heath led the third round of accession negotiations in 1970, this time as prime minister, when Europe entered a new phase, slowly set in motion by the election of Pompidou as president of France. At this time the goal of bringing accession negotiations to a positive conclusion served the common interest of governments in Paris, London, and Bonn. Edward Heath demonstrated willingness to impress a much higher level of adaptation of the UK national strategy to the existing model of European cooperation than his predecessors, but also built on the Luxembourg Compromise, which had opened a breach in the communitarian dimension by protecting national ‘vital interests’ and cancelling out, selectively, Qualified Majority Voting (QMV). The third round of negotiations was for Heath a matter of achieving entry at all costs, this allowing accession to the EC to be brought to completion in January 1973. On the Community side, the enlargement, taking in Denmark, Ireland and the UK, highlighted for the first time an untested mechanism, giving the Acquis Communautaire the prominence that it has always retained. But did Britain, like Henry IV before the Pope, go to Canossa, bending the knee to the economic success of the EC and accepting Community Preference for agriculture? Or did British governments act strategically, looking at membership as the first step towards a future trilateral (with France and Germany) leadership of a second Europe?