EEC–Soviet Union cooperation agreement
international agreement
The Agreement between the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on trade and commercial and economic cooperation (Russian: Соглашение между СССР и Европейским экономическим сообществом и Европейским сообществом по атомной энергии о торговле, коммерческом и экономическом сотрудничестве) is an international agreement of European Economic Community (EEC), the Euratom and the Soviet Union (USSR) signed in Brussels on 18 December 1989 and came into force on 1 April 1990. As of 2025, the Agreement is in force between the European Union and the Republic of Belarus and between the European Union and Turkmenistan. Previously, the Agreement applied to relations with other successor states of the Soviet Union, but has been replaced by separate bilateral agreements with each country.
Background
According to Dr Wolfgang Mueller, under Mikhail Gorbachev, the USSR finally recognized the EEC in 1988.
On 25 June 1988, a Joint Declaration on the establishment of official relations between the European Economic Community and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (of which the Soviet Union was a member) was signed and entered into force on the same day.
On 31 December 1989, President of France Francois Mitterrand called for the creation of a "European confederation" designed to "associate all states of the continent in a common and permanent organization for exchanges, peace and security". This explicitly included the Soviet Union.
In February 1990, Eurosceptic British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proposed "a wider European association" that would rival or replace the European Community, and which the Soviet Union could join in the long term.
As the Kommersant newspaper wrote on 9 April 1990 after the Agreement enters into force on 1 April, "prior to the Agreement coming into force, the main feature of the European Communities’ common foreign trade policy towards the USSR was the existence of discriminatory quantitative restrictions on exports from the Soviet Union."
Agreement
The Agreement between the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on trade and commercial and economic cooperation was signed in Brussels on 18 December 1989 by Roland Dumas, the President-in-Office of the Council of the European Communities, Frans Andriessen, the Vice-President of the Commission of the European Communities and Eduard Shevardnadze, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
On 26 February 1990, The Agreement between the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on trade and commercial and economic cooperation is hereby approved on behalf of the European Economic Community by the Council.
“EEC–Soviet Union cooperation agreement” enters the record as international agreement. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Soviet, Union and cooperation can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q135976096. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1990, 2025 and 1988.
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