‘GREAT EXPECTATIONS’: ROMANIA’S ACCESSION TO THE GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE (1968-1971)
‘GREAT EXPECTATIONS’: ROMANIA’S ACCESSION TO THE GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE (1968-1971)

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the 1960s, the Romanian authorities awarded more and more importance to foreign trade, aiming to increase trade relations with all states, regardless of their political and economic system. One of the main international organizations regulating international trade was the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), to which Romania became an observer in 1957 and with which it established “technical contacts” in 1966. This article investigates Romania’s diplomatic efforts to be accepted as a Contracting Party to the GATT. The timeframe of the paper spans from 1968, when Romania applied for membership to 1971, when it signed the protocol. In this sense, this article will look at Romanian-European Economic Community (EEC) contacts within the GATT, a subject rather ignored by the scholarship until now. For the first time in historiography, this article investigates Romania’s GATT accession negotiations. Based on multi-archival research, the work is structured into three main parts. The first section briefly presents the context in which, at the end of the 1960s, Romania decided to become a contracting party to GATT. This framework details the country’s expectations / hopes for accession. The second part analyzes the actual negotiations, highlighting especially the points of divergence between Romania and the contracting parties. The third part details the official and unofficial assessments of the Romanian side regarding the results obtained following the accession negotiations.

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