Assessing Yugoslavia’s Place in Western European Stabilisation Policies in Southern Europe, 1974-1976

In recent years, historians have devoted much attention to the prominent role played by the major Western European powers - in primis France and the Federal Republic of Germany - in stabilising the troubled Southern European scenario of the mid-1970s through the power of economic and political attraction exerted by the European Eco­nomic Community (EEC). This chapter adds another element to this picture, offering a historical reappraisal of Western European stabilisation policy towards Yugoslavia between 1974 and 1976. This work argues that, mutatis mutandis, Western European goals towards Greece and Portugal - political stabilisation and strengthening of eco­nomic links with the Western system - also concerned Yugoslavia, whose indepen­dence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union was regarded as a major precondition for the stability of the whole Mediterranean region.