Détente and Beyond

Détente and Beyond

Anglo-Romanian Relations
in the Aviation Industry
(1966-1993)

Mauro Elli

Euroclio
Vol. 102

Linguistic supervision: Nicola Resnati.

This volume is published thanks to the support of Università degli Studi
di Milano and Università degli Studi di Padova.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

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About the author

Mauro Elli, Ph.D., is currently Adjunct Professor in Contemporary History at the State University of Milan. He has published several contributions on the reciprocal feedback between foreign policy and technology during the Cold War, with a focus on nuclear power developments.

About the book

By the mid-1960s, the whole European aviation industry had begun looking at two main solutions in order to survive competition from the USA: European cooperation, and exports to markets still closed to the Americans. Against this background, Anglo-Romanian dealings in the aviation industry over a period of almost thirty years are a case of converging politico-military interests with major interpretative potential. This holds true for the history of East-West relations and infra-Western commercial competition, but also for the transformation of domestic decision-making patterns and the change in economic priorities. While Britain became Romania’s first commercial partner in order to offer a new outlet to the aviation industry, Bucharest was looking at the UK to pursue a strategy of industrial modernisation and political visibility. The story of their intersection sheds light on the lower-level reality of Détente in Europe. The degree of collaboration across the Iron Curtain was not just the product of a generally improved diplomatic atmosphere, but – at least in the present case – the result of a peculiar mixture of political ambition, economic viability, and technological expertise. Indeed, the change of economic paradigm in the UK (from Neo-Keynesianism to monetarist Neo-Liberalism), along with President Ceauşescu’s fixation with foreign debt, played a crucial role in the vicissitudes of Anglo-Romanian relations in the aviation industry in the period between the demise of Détente and the end of the Cold War. This points to a reasonably articulated model, which is hinged on the category of ‘transfer’, rather than on the category of ‘cooperation’.

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Acronyms

AA Associated Aerospace

AEI Associated Electrical Industries

AMEJ Papers of Julian Amery, Churchill College, Cambridge

ANR, CC The National Archives of Romania, Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party, Bucharest

ARB Air Registration Board

BA British Airways

BAC British Aircraft Corporation

BAe British Aerospace

BDOHP British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Churchill College, Cambridge

BEA British European Airways

BHC British Hovercraft Corporation

B-N Britten-Norman

BP British Petroleum

CAA Civil Aviation Administration

CIAR Headquarters of the Romanian Aeronautical Industry (Centrala Industriei Aeronautice Române)

CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance

CNIAR National Centre of Aeronautical Industry (Centrul Național al Industriei Aeronautice Române)

CoCom Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union

CSCE Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe

DBPO Documents on British Foreign Policy Overseas

DOI Department of Industry

DOT Department of Trade

DTI Department of Trade and Industry←9 | 10→

MAEF Archives du Ministère des affaires étrangères←10 | 11→

VFW United Flight-technical Company (Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke)←11 | 12→ ←12 | 13→

Introduction and Acknowledgements

This book has come together almost by chance. I was mainly concerned – and I still am – with nuclear power and in 2010 I was completing a research on one of the two atomic power plants that the British managed to export in the 1950s, specifically the one purchased by the ENI Group for Latina. I was looking for a new topic, convinced – as I was back then – that my job would always be historical research, a field that possibly had nothing to do with nuclear power, because – it was suggested – it would be appropriate for my academic future to show the ability to be flexible, not to focus on one single theme to be rehashed at any given opportunity.

On the one hand, I wanted to investigate something that had to do with Romania, because in previous years I had been able to develop a special bond with this country for personal reasons. On the other hand, I had a very cursory knowledge of its history, and I had never had dealings with Eastern Europe. It was then that one of my colleagues in Milan, an expert on such topics, with his good-naturedly brazen ways, told me that if I wanted to try and research a significant theme that involved both the Romanians and ‘my beloved English’ I would have to consider planes.

Aeroplanes, for me, were just a means of transport – and not a very comfortable one. However, I jumped aboard one heading for London and for a couple of weeks I lost myself in that extraordinary place of study still known at that time as the Public Record Office. During that stay, I could not do much, apart from seeing the amount of material available and understanding, though still in an obscure way, the enormous quantity of historical links that such research could offer. Accustomed as I was to take the availability of low-cost carriers on European routes for granted, I still remember my amazement upon learning that one of the first aircraft operated by the newly-formed Ryanair – the Spirit of Dublin – was a ROMBAC 1-11 manufactured in Romania.¹