On 22 July 1972, at the signing in Brussels of the Trade Agreement between Portugal and the European Economic Community (EEC), Rui Patrício, Portuguese Foreign Minister, delivers an address in which he places particular emphasis on the need to deepen relations and extend the areas of cooperation between Portugal and the European Communities.

Financial Protocol between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Portuguese Republic which was signed on 20 September 1976 and entered into force on 1 November 1978. This Protocol, which aimed to make emergency aid available to Portugal with a view to promoting the accelerated development of its economy, is an integral part of the Agreement of 22 July 1972 between the EEC and the Portuguese Republic.

Additional Protocol to the Agreement between the European Economic Community and the Portuguese Republic dated 22 July 1972. This Protocol, which was signed on 20 September 1976 and which entered into force on 1 November 1978, includes provisions concerning trade measures and cooperation in the area of social policy as well as industrial, technological and financial cooperation.

On 16 July 1976, Mário Soares, Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal, convenes his first constitutional government.

On 22 July 1972, in Brussels, the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Portuguese Republic sign an agreement which provides for the dismantling of tariffs on industrial goods and on certain agricultural products.

‘We never want to be apart again …’ On 13 March 1975, eleven months after the military coup and the beginning of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, Fritz Behrendt, a Dutch cartoonist originally from Berlin, paints an ironic picture of the country’s future and speculates on the process of political democratisation in Portugal and the ambitions of the country’s military.

On 18 January 1971, the Portuguese Foreign Ministry sends to its Diplomatic Missions abroad a confidential circular to inform them of the operation and aims of the exploratory talks which began on 7 January in Brussels between Ruy Teixeira Guerra, Head of the Portuguese Delegation, and Edmond Wellenstein, Director-General of Foreign Trade at the Commission of the European Communities.

On 25 April 1974, reporting on the early stages of the military insurrection and the ‘Carnation Revolution’, the Portuguese daily newspaper Diário de Notícias assesses the situation in Lisbon.

In April 1986, in an article in the periodical EFTA Bulletin, Sven Norberg, Director of Legal Affairs in the Secretariat of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), analyses the consequences of the accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Economic Community (EEC) for the future of EFTA.

In March 1985, the federalist journal L’Europe en Formation welcomes the accession of Spain and Portugal to the European Communities and calls for a change in the decision-making process in order to ensure the viability of the Community system.