Spain and the EU Eastward Enlargement

Spain joined the European Communities on 1 January 1986, once the required accession treaty had been signed at the historic setting of the Columns Hall of the Royal Palace in Madrid on 12 June 2015. Consequently, when the process of approximation between the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe and the then-European Communities got started, at the beginning of the 1990s, Spain was just a newly incorporated partner in the process of European construction struggling to gain a foothold among the ‘big five’ member States and a role commensurate with its demographic weight and the aspirations of its diplomacy, and a country that aspired to be decisive in determining the political future of a Union that was on the verge of the most decisive decade in its history.

(Extract from the Introduction)