PORTUGAL AND EUROPE

Editorial Note

 

The journal Relações Internacionais (R:I) has been published by the Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IPRI-NOVA) since it was founded in 2004. It is a quarterly academic journal with reflections and debate on international politics that takes a plural and open line to all academic fields, all political sciences and international relations schools. In the last fourteen years, 59 editions of Relações Internacionais (R:I) have been published. These are available on the IPRI-NOVA website.

IPRI-NOVA has a committed internationalisation strategy. Its aims include making Portuguese studies on political science and international relations more accessible. It was therefore decided to start publishing an annual edition of its Relações Internacionais journal (R:I) in English and online. Simultaneously, Relações Internacionais (R:I) continues its regular publication of four paper editions in Portuguese every year, and to present the work of Portuguese and foreign researchers in the field of international relations and comparative politics.

This first special edition in English addresses a central topic in Portugal’s foreign policy, namely Europe, and it includes articles published in Relações Internacionais (R:I) by a number of Portuguese researchers in the fields of history, European studies, international politics and comparative politics.

The edition opens with an article by David Castaño focusing on the period of Portugal’s democratisation. The article takes a historical perspective to analyse, on one hand, the role played by Europe in Portugal’s democratisation and, on the other, the socialist governments’ position on Portugal’s integration in the EEC which was in 1986.

The article by Alice Cunha adopts a comparative approach to Portugal and Spain’s respective application processes for EEC membership which led to the creation of convergence on the European project. Focusing on the negotiation period for each country, the article strives to demonstrate how the interests of the Member States influenced the pace of the negotiation processes.

Following the historical contextualisation provided by the two first articles, the article by Jorge M. Fernandes and José Santana Pereira analyses the European elections of 2014. In the context of an international and European crisis, and above all an economic crisis, the authors examine the European election programmes of Portugal’s five largest parties. This analysis reveals a pattern of relative consensus on Portugal’s continuity in both the European Union and the Economic and Monetary Union.

Continuing against the backcloth of the economic crisis, José Pedro Teixeira Fernandes discusses how pro-federalist proposals can be seen as a solution to this crisis in the Eurozone and also addresses the repercussions of these options for Portugal. In the same vein, Teresa de Sousa and Carlos Gaspar assess how the European and Portuguese economic crisis has impacted the strategic debate on Portugal’s foreign policy. The authors consider that, in light of this new context, the debate in Portugal has started to question the terms of Portugal’s options in relation to Europe for the first time since Maastricht.