Britain's attempt to join the EEC Flashcards
in 1961 what did Macmillian do?
Macmillian submitted an application for Britain to join the EEC
What was the fundamental reason for Britain changing its mind to join the EEC?
Economic reasons
Britain hoped that joining the EEC would do what to industrial production?
boost industrial production for a large-scale export market
Britain hoped that joining the EEC would do what to industrial efficiency?
increase industrial efficiency with greater competition
Britain hoped that joining the EEC would do what to economic growth?
stimulate economic growth with the rapid economic expansion already seen in the EEC
why was the United States keen to see Britain join the EEC?
for strategic reasons- saw Britain as a vital link between Europe and America
tensions were rising in the late 1950s in the cold war but also what had happened to Britain’s power?
-Britain’s imperial power had been shaken by Suez and pay the accelerating pace of decolonisation in Africa
Despite the application to join the EEC, what did Britain want that made negotiations with the EEC extremely complex and difficult?
Britain wanted to keep its political position in two other areas of world affairs-the commonwealth and the united states
what had the EEC developed which Britain found difficult to conform to?
-the EEC had already developed detailed economic structures especially the Common Agricultural policy
what had to be sought?
special exemptions for Britain’s commonwealth trade partners, such as lamb exports from New Zealand which would have been blocked by EEC rules
-took months of hard bargaining
who led the months of hard bargaining on the British side
-Macmillian’s chief negotiator Edward Heath
the negotiations seemed to have reached a successful conclusion in?
January 1963 but at last minute french president Charles de Gaulle exercised Frances’s right of Veto and blocked Britains’s application
De Gaulle intervention was a bombshell why?
-The other five members of EEc were as shocked + disappointed as the British negotiating team but unable to persuade Gaulle to carry on with the negotiations
what did Gaulle’s intervention cause?
bad relations between Britain and France for some time
-also meant that Britain remained outside fo the EEc
