Unstable Bonds: CERN’s Relations with Its Peripheral Member States, 1950s–1960s

Abstract

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) established in 1954 constitutes one of the first forms of European cooperation of the post-Second World War period. Historically, CERN developed outside of the institutional frame of the ECSC/EEC and can be seen as an early example of an alternative path to Europeanisation within the scientific domain. Through a reconstruction of the negotiations between CERN and three of its member states – Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia – regarding their participation in the organisation in the 1950s and 1960s, I show that Europeanisation at CERN had a political and a scientific dimension. On the one hand, the intergovernmental character of CERN made it an attractive organisation for these countries to join. On the other hand, CERN’s centrality in the European physics landscape was shaped in response to the difficulties faced by these three members.