European construction and the Franco-Soviet Summit in Kiev (December 6, 1989). Part I

Abstract

Since 1990, and especially after the Franco-Soviet meeting of December 6, a large number of opinions, studies, and articles in the Romanian historiography have spoken of a „plot” of the West (NATO & EEC), in agreement with the Soviet Union, against socialist Romania. In spite of this fact, the official documents of the EEC and NATO, the stenographic records from the meetings of the European Council, as well as other documentary testimonies and memorialistic works, show that the year 1989 was dominated by the collapse of the strategic glacis of the USSR and the amplification of the European construction process. The franco-soviet Summit that took place in Kiev on December 6, 1989 represents an essential milestone on the way to the Maastricht Treaty (February 7, 1992) rather than an episode of the Soviet-Western „plot” against socialist Romania. The President of France was involved in a complicated political-diplomatic game whose stake was European unity in which Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to make major political concessions in favor of President François Mitterrand’s geopolitical plans: 1) launching the negotiations on the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union, as a prelude of the future European Union; 2) recognizing of Germany’s borders with Poland on the Oder-Neisse line; 3) maintaining Germany unified in NATO and 4) confirming Germany’s denuclearization. These were the necessary conditions without which President François Mitterrand did not want to discuss with Mihail S. Gorbachev about „German reunification”.