The Adhesion Agreements of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the European Union and the Spanish Interests

Abstract

When the Council of Lisbon of 1992 gave the go-ahead to the amplification of the European Union (EU), it did so on the condition of a prior advance in political integration and the endowment of the necessary financial resources which were specified in the Treaty of European Union and the Delors Package. The author explains how thefactor that the four candidates (which ended up with the adhesion of three of them) were adhered to the European Economic Space facilitated the driving of the negotiations on a fast track.Spain, which sheltered the fear that the admission of countries traditionally unwilling to accept the transfer of sovereignty would dilute those concepts of integration, assumed the need for adhesion of these high-income countries before facing the amplification of the EU towards eastern Europe. Given the relative ease with which the candidates accepted the assumption of community patrimony, the Spanish negotiating position centred itself in its refusal to allow an increase in the blocking minority in Council voting sessions, in the maintenance of the conditions in passing to the third phase ofthe Economic and Monetary Union, in the defense of fishing and agricultural interests, in avoiding that the figures dedicated to structural funds be reduced as well as ensuring the raising of environmental standards.