Ireland Through European Eyes: Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945-1973

This novel collection draws together a European field of expertise and resources. It reveals how Belgian, French, Italian, Luxembourg, Dutch, and West German politicians, policymakers and commentators perceived independent Ireland from the end of the Second World War until Irish accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. These six West European states initiated and sustained the integration process from the debris of the Second World War. They offered Ireland a developmental and international alternative to small nation state obscurity and vulnerability. Together with the EEC institutions of the Commission and the Council of Ministers principally, these states both transformed European relations and determined the fate of Ireland’s application to enter the EEC after 1961.