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Nicolau Andresen-Leitão
as a rival threat. Although this threat was implicit, with Europe proving a magnet
both for the Portuguese economy and Portuguese migration, reality would be a
scarce commodity in the colonial argument. In 1970, the hard-line ex-Foreign minister,
Franco Nogueira, argued in Parliament that if Portugal were to join the EEC,
Portugal would be “colonised by Europe”. Although, Nogueira went on to consider
European economic integration “a myth”! 35
In the same year, a government report on the EEC was to conclude that Portugal
had no alternative to negotiating an agreement. Written by a committee chaired by
Ruy Teixeira Guerra, with José Calvet de Magalhães, and José da Silva Lopes
among its members, the report recommended the government to maintain the objective
of the 1962-63 negotiations, i.e. associate membership of the EEC. 36 The
advice was to be rejected in favour of a trade agreement. Salazar’s weak successor,
Marcello Caetano, understood that the EEC would only be prepared to negotiate a
trade agreement due to Portugal’s continued colonial policy. Caetano was opposed
to Community membership on political grounds, although, in public, he rejected
EEC entry solely on economic grounds, considering that Portuguese agriculture,
industry and trade would not survive. According to Caetano, “we did not ask, did
not want, nor did it suit us to have any form of entry into the Common Market”,
deliberately overlooking the possibility of signing an association agreement. 37
Salazar thus proved to be more adaptable in European affairs than his successor,
since he was prepared to negotiate an association agreement after 1962 while
Caetano only favoured a trade agreement, which was finally signed in July 1972,
and ratified by the Portuguese Parliament in December. 38
35. Nogueira's parliamentary intervention is published in J.M.T. CASTILHO, A Ideia da Europa no
Marcelismo (1968-1974), Lisbon, 2000, pp.335-343. This recently published work, without the
benefit of access to archive sources, gives an excellent history of the contradictory relations of the
Caetano government with Europe. For an economic justification of Nogueira’s argument see P.
XAVIER, Portugal e a Integração Europeia, Lisbon, 1970.
36. “Relatório da Comissão de Estudos sobre a Integração Económica Europeia”, Lisbon, September
1970, mimeo, pp.136-139. This report is available in the Archive Library of the Arquivo Histórico-Diplomático.
37. M. CAETANO, As Grandes Opções, Lisbon, 1972, p.33.
38. Some authors, like J. Cravinho, consider that Portugal “got a rough deal” in the 1972 EEC trade agreement
with exceptions, as Lopes points out, to the general rule of free trade affecting forty-five per cent
of Portuguese exports; Characteristics and Motives for Entry, in: J.L. SAMPEDRO and J.A. PAYNO,
The Enlargement of the European Community, Case-Studies of Greece, Portugal and Spain, London,
1983, p.135, and LOPES, A economia portuguesa …, op.cit., p.277. According to Guerra the 1972 Portugal-EC
trade agreement was regarded by the hard-line faction of the Salazar regime as containing the
risk of “political infection (…) prejudicial to the overseas pledge”, quoted in R.T. GUERRA, A.S.
FREIRE and J.C. MAGALHÃES, Movimentos de Cooperação …, op.cit., p.21.