Angela Romano
From inception of the first Community until 1988/89, the regimes of the countries belonging to the socialist bloc led by the Soviet Union adopted a formal policy of non-recognition of the European Communities (EC). Yet, as recent historiography has demonstrated, at least from the mid-1960s onwards, several European socialist states, while adhering to this official stance, increasingly negotiated and signed sectoral agreements with the EC. Scholars have analysed relations between the EC and the socialist bloc countries as a matter of foreign policy or trade ascribed to governments and institutions, of which they have appraised the rationales and goals, as well as actions and achievements. The proposed research aims at bringing the human factor into the analysis, focusing on the agents who actually conducted and shaped these unofficial contacts between the EC Commission and the socialist bloc countries during the Cold War. The research will identify the EC officials and the socialist representatives involved in various contacts, map the latter and assess the role of these people in terms of trust building, discourse change and policy content shaping. By bringing the human connections into the picture, the proposed research will enrich our understanding of the history of Cold War Europe and the various strategies implemented by continental actors to overcome its constraints, while also contributing to the current debates in the field of New Diplomatic History.