Winner of the Saki Ruth Dockrill memorial prize ‘The unity of Europe is inevitable’ : Poland and the European economic community in the 1970s

First published online: 18 May 2020This article explores the effects of Western European integration on socialist Poland in the 1970s. It argues that the existence of the European Economic Community (EEC) and its actions in that period helped weaken the Polish regime by accelerating its engagement with the West and provoking conflicts, at the national level between different groups within the socialist elite, and at the international level between members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).The research leading to this article is part of the project PanEur1970s, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme