Topic 1: Prehistory of the EU-Russia Relations. The USSR and Europe in 1945-1990s, Warsaw Pact and the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance. (1/2)

EU-Russia “special” relations are described as being undergone substantial phases since the initial period of the collapse of the Soviet Union and “honey-moon” through mutual frustration to the current status of divorce and break. The "prehistoric" phase is associated with the formation on the fields of post-war Europe of two economic camps - capitalist and socialist - and two security blocs – under the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance ( better known as the Warsaw Pact Organisation (WPO) in 1955 [hyperlink to video here] and NATO in 1949. In 1949 the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon, CMEA) has been created under the dominance of the USSR and as a competitor to the European Economic Community, while the WPO stood for a military assistance block against NATO in the Eastern Europe. The first accord that signalled the mutual recognition of the sectoral relations between the USSR and the European Economic Community was the Agreement on trade and commercial cooperation signed in 1989.