The European Community and the Belgrade CSCE

The EC Nine were effectively able to speak with a single voice and came to be recognised as a distinct and unitary actor at the Helsinki CSCE. Thanks to this successful experience, the Nine made the CSCE process a permanent task of their political cooperation efforts. This chapter offers the first assessment of the EC Nine’s action at the first CSCE follow-up conference in Belgrade, It first reports the EC Nine’s preparation for the Helsinki conference in order to provide the fundamental elements of their approach to the CSCE process. The analysis then appraises the effects of the Helsinki experience on the EC Nine and their preparation for the next meeting. It therefore focuses on the EC Nine’s action in Belgrade on the different issues on the agenda, also paying due attention to tactics and internal coordination. In this context the author acknowledges meaningful changes, viz. the attitude of the new US administration, which somehow conditioned the action of the EC Nine during the negotiations. In the concluding part, the author assesses the performance of the EC Nine in Belgrade by also taking into consideration the perspective of the West European governments and EC institutions. The analysis is based on archival sources from the European Union, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.