Crisis, capitalism and common policies: Greek and Norwegian responses to common shipping policy efforts in the 1960s and 1970s

Abstract

The role of regional integration in trade creation has been an integral part of the theoretical debates on the birth and expansion of the Common Market. 1 Its resulting role as a generator of transport services, however, is a rather neglected theme in European studies. 2 Thus, the insights of maritime history occupy only a marginal place in the field of European integration history. At the same time, the study of European Economic Community (EEC)/ European Union (EU) enlargement, and integration history more generally, has only recently begun considering the transformative role of outsiders, 3 and remains largely neo-institutionalist in its focus on the negotiations within the EC or between member states and applicants. 4 This article studies the response of two outsiders towards a prospective Common Shipping Policy (CSP) during the 1960s and the 1970s, adopting a business perspective and focusing on the shipping sector in Greece and Norway. In line with the objectives of this special issue, then, this article explores the fact that two leading shipping nations found the EC's CSP limiting-fearing a protectionist and dirigiste mode of capitalism-both in times of growth and in times of crisis, and how the prospect of membership in the EC was used as a launch-pad for divergent business strategies both in the 1960s and 1970s, as a response to a global economic crisis and the emergence of new modes of capitalism. Drawing on a wide range of archival material from the regional, state and business level, from multiple countries (Britain, Greece, Norway, US), we aim to show the usefulness of studying the business sector from the periphery as a way of understanding European integration. The article offers three overall insights, and these structure the article. First, it demonstrates why the prospect of a CSP was too regional and restrictive for Greek and Norwegian shipowners. Rather than being a story of peripheries reacting against an allencompassing centre, it provincializes the Community, and places it within the global shipping strategies of two peripheral European countries. 5 Moreover, the article shows that the cooperation and coordination of shipowners and their national organisations transcend the member/non-member-dichotomy. 6 A historiographical argument is, therefore, that a sectoral

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