Paying the Price for Allies: Britain, the Seven and the EFTA Stockholm Negotiations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Few scholars would dispute that negotiations for the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), which formally commenced near Stockholm in June 1959, moved at breakneck speed. Generally acknowledged too are the reasons behind this haste: the need swiftly to find another route to working with the European Economic Community (EEC) following the collapse of the wider Free Trade Area (FTA) proposal, the degree of consensus already achieved by the Association’s founder members during the FTA talks, and the fact that few felt EFTA was a permanent alternative to an arrangement with the Six. But none of this negated the very real obstacles faced by negotiators. Each indeed obliged the Seven collectively – and, as by far the single largest economic actor, Britain specifically – to reconsider the scope of the agreement under discussion and the sorts of concessions required to reach a deal. And yet this is a moment in EFTA’s founding often glossed over in extant literature. This article consequently provides a long-overdue detailed study of the build-up to, and evolution of, the Stockholm negotiations, examining the topics on which negotiators focused and the conditions under which compromises eventually emerged. In so doing, it points to the agency of smaller EFTA states in being able to exercise maximum influence at critical junctures in the process and explains why the timing of their demands as well as the nature of the negotiations themselves ultimately influenced their success.