Greece Joins the European Economic Community
A young democracy locks itself into Europe to keep the military out of politics for good
Quick facts
- Application submitted
- 12 June 1975
- Treaty of Accession signed
- May 1979
- Formal accession
- 1 January 1981
- Membership number
- 10th EEC member state
What happened
Greece formally applied for full membership in the European Economic Community on 12 June 1975, a year after the restoration of democracy, explicitly seeking to stabilize its political system and reinforce its economic development. Negotiations began in 1976 and concluded with the Treaty of Accession, signed in May 1979. Greece became the tenth member state of the EEC on 1 January 1981, the first of the three southern European countries emerging from dictatorship in the 1970s, alongside Spain and Portugal, to join.
Why it matters
EEC membership gave Greece's fragile new democracy an external anchor, binding the country into a community of Western European democracies at a moment when the memory of the 1967 coup was still recent, and it set the template Greece's post-junta leaders used repeatedly: trade sovereignty over economic and foreign policy for insurance against a return to authoritarian rule.
How we know
The accession process and its political motivations are documented in the Greek government's own account of its EU membership history and independently confirmed in retrospective analysis of the accession marking its 40th anniversary.
Sources
- Greek News Agenda. 40 years of Greece's membership to the EU · General sourcegreeknewsagenda.gr · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Research Foundation "Eleftherios K. Venizelos". Biography · General sourcevenizelos-foundation.gr · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match).
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