La svolta europea del 1985. Il ruolo dell’Italia

Abstract

The Author, at the time Permanent Representative of Italy to the European Communities – and signatory of the adhesion treaties of Spain and Portugal – recalls the final part of the negotiations (which had started in 1977). At the beginning of the Eighties, the Community was blocked by the British budgetary question, finally somehow solved in 1984 at the Fontainebleau European Council led by François Mitterrand. The Italian Presidency started on January 1, 1985, a few days before Jacque Delors’ arrival in Bruxelles as President of the European Commission, and engaged itself to conclude the negotiations by the end of June 1985, to allow Spain and Portugal’s entry into the Community by January 1986. The article is a direct account of the final part of the negotiations, whose successful conclusion – together with the following Milan European Council of the end of June 1985 – did open a new period in Community’s history.