Political Europe: The Cold War and the Great Decolonization–From the Yaoundé Convention to Lomé Conventions

The period from the mid-1970s right through the 1980s was one in which the European Community was faced with the most critical phase in a decolonisation process which has been one of the contemporary era's longest and most complex challenges . Whilst the issue of European relations with what were soon to be called Developing Countries were an issue right from the inception of the European Economic Community in 1957-58, it was, however, only once the Yaoundé Convention came into force as the first treaty regulating relations between the European Six and the African and Malagasy Union that a tangible dialogue began to take shape between at least one part of the Old Continent and its more or less recent colonial past. This essay will attempt to shed light on the key phases in this process, a still under-studied subject about which little is known, the great expansion in the academic literature on European integration notwithstanding.