Pan-Europe: A continental space for cooperation(s)

In the last decade, several historians have successfully challenged and qualified the long-lived understanding of Cold War Europe as a space of confrontation and separation. Focusing on European actors and relations, they have revealed the emergence and consolidation of a multi-layered space for bilateral and multilateral forms of cooperation which coexisted with opposing military blocs, separated economic organisations and ideological competition. To reveal the complexity and interconnectedness of this emerging pan-European space for cooperation, this chapter considers political and economic interactions at the bilateral and multilateral levels, the main forms of integration between East and West, the action of actors that were previously passive, such as the European Economic Community (EEC), and the impact of EEC policies on the socialist countries, including the question of recognition.