During the 1970s human rights took the front stage in international relations; fuelling political debates, social activism and a reconceptualising of both East-West and North-South relations. Nowhere was the debate on human rights more intense than in Western Europe, where human rights discourses intertwined the Cold War and the European Convention on Human Rights, the legacies of European empires, and the construction of national welfare systems. Over time, the European Community (EC) began incorporating human rights into its international activity, with the ambitious political will to prove that the Community was a global "civilian power."

This book brings together the growing scholarship on human rights during the 1970s, the history of European integration and the study of Western European supranational cooperation. Examining the role of human rights in EC activities in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, The Human Rights Breakthrough of the 1970s seeks to verify whether a specifically European approach to human rights existed, and asks whether there was a distinctive 'European voice' in the human rights surge of the 1970s.

Sara Lorenzini is Professor of Contemporary History and Jean Monnet Chair in History of European Integration at the University of Trento, Italy.
Umberto Tulli is a Postdoctoral fellow in Contemporary History and Adjunct Professor at the University of Trento, Italy
Ilaria Zamburlini is a fellow of the University of Udine, Italy, where she teaches human rights in Europe.

Introduction: the place of human rights in European integration, Sara Lorenzini, Umberto Tulli, and Ilaria Zamburlini
Part I: The European community and human rights violations in the world
1. Knocking on Europe's doors: Community Europe and human rights after dictatorial rule in Southern Europe, 1974-1977, Victor Fernandez Soriano
2. Introducing human rights within development cooperation policies: the European Community between the United States and the Soviet Union, Ilaria Zamburlini
3. A reluctant promoter: The EC, CSCE and human rights in East-West relations, Umberto Tulli
4. EC member states' stance on human rights issues: The perspective from the UN General Assembly, 1970-9, Lorenzo Ferrari



Part II: Member States, supranational institutions, European parties
5. The European Union of Christian Democrats and the controversy regarding the Spanish accession to the EC in the 1970s: the human rights problem, MariaLuisa Sergio
6. The Socialist Group of the European Parliament and human rights in the second half of the 1970s, Christian Salm
7. An awkward parter?: Britain's human rights policy and EC relations, 1977-9, David Grealy
8. Between Restrictiveness and Humanitarianism. EC institutions and the asylum policies of the 1980s, Gaia Lott



Part III: Other Europes
9. Human rights NGOs in Western Europe and the intervention of the Council of Europe in the Nigerian Civil War, Oluchukwu Ignatus Onianwa
10. Beyond victims of communism?: Austria and the human rights question in the 1970s, Maximilian Graf
Part IV: After the breakthrough: the European Union and human rights
11. The Twelve and the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, Elena Calandri
12. The European Union's Influence on the Dutch position in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Peter Malcontent