Enlargement and the EC’s evolving democratic identity, 1962-1978’

Building on multiple archival sources, the chapter traces how the Community institutions legitimized the expansion and continuation of the process of European integration through the discursive construction of democracy. It will focus on the entangled exchanges and debates elicited by the attempts of Southern European countries to accede to the EEC in the 1960-70s: the rebuttal of Spain’s initial overtures in 1962, the challenge of Greece – the Community’s first Associate member – being taken over by a military dictatorship in 1967, and finally the democratizing of Greece, Spain and Portugal after the fall of their respective dictatorships in the 1970s.