European Economic Community

European Economic Community was the title of the EEC, which Britain joined on 1 January 1973, also known as the Common Market, later as the European Community; after the treaty of Maastricht, as the European Union.

Britain stayed out of the EEC's forerunner, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), formed in 1952. This was a French initiative designed to ensure continuing influence over the German Ruhr's coal and steel production. The Labour government had just nationalized Britain's coal industry and faced trade union opposition to ‘handing it over to foreign capitalists’. The members of the ECSC agreed in 1955 to explore further economic and atomic co‐operation. Britain declined to send a representative and therefore had no influence on the treaty of Rome that established the EEC. Macmillan's application in July 1961 was vetoed by French President de Gaulle in 1963, as was a second application, made by Wilson in 1967. De Gaulle's downfall in 1969, coupled with French economic weakness, cleared the way for the success of Britain's third application to join, under Heath in 1970–1. Unfortunately for Britain, the EEC had come to agreements in 1970, detrimental to Britain's future membership, on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and budget contributions.

The early Thatcher years from 1979 were dogged by arguments over Britain's EEC budget contribution. Opinion varies on how far Thatcher's behaviour was responsible for the favourable deal eventually at the Fontainebleau European Council in June 1984, but the whole row reinforced Britain's reputation for obstructiveness. With the budget row settled, Britain went on to play a positive role in the mid‐Thatcher years. A new, more subtle approach enabled Britain to work with others to guide the eventual Single Market proposals towards the aim of trade liberalization with minimal institutional reform. The Single European Act, signed in Luxembourg on 17 February 1985, was the result, coming into force on 1 July 1987. Majority voting in the Council of Ministers was extended to ease the passage of European legislation.

However, Thatcher was still to be found in isolation. She was hostile to participation in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), or European Monetary Union (EMU), which led to the resignation of cabinet ministers Lawson and Howe. Others ridiculed the idea that national identities were threatened by European integration. Thatcher's opposition to these views was famously articulated in her Bruges speech of 20 September 1988: ‘Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity . . . We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the State in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.’ Divisions within the Conservative government of John Major from 1990 were damaging. In September 1992 his government was forced to withdraw from the ERM, and in August 1993 he carried the Maastricht treaty, which he had struggled to renegotiate, only after making it a confidence vote. The Labour government of 1997 began with warm intentions towards Europe, but became markedly less enthusiastic as the Euro, the new single currency introduced in January 1999, went into embarrassing decline. Meanwhile a policy of devolution within the British Isles sat oddly with theavowed ambition of many European spokesmen to seek ever further integration, which would inevitably increase the power of Brussels.