B - The ‘Agreement on Developing and Deepening the Long-Term Co-operation between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the Economic and Industrial Fields’ of 6 May 1978

Summary

On 6 May 1978 an agreement on developing and deepening the long-term co-operation between the FRG and the USSR in the economic and industrial fields was signed which came into force on 27 December. As Chancellor Schmidt pointed out, the agreement had of course been prepared by the two sides before the Brezhnev visit: at the press conference on 7 May 1978 Schmidt personally warned that the agreement should not be regarded as ‘having been born off the cuff, as it were’. Fred Oldenburg and Christian Meier write that Schmidt claimed to be the initiator of the agreement but that in fact Brezhnev had expressed great interest in such an agreement already during his first visit to Bonn in 1973.

The agreement was called a co-operation agreement, not a trade agreement. This meant that it was not subject to the EEC ruling that trade agreements might only be concluded with the Soviet Union by the Community and no longer bilaterally. Co-operation agreements were only subject to the requirement that the EEC be consulted. The agreement was a very broad framework agreement to be concretely filled out through further negotiations. It did not establish any new projects but was meant to give new impulse to trade and industry between the two states. It applied for twenty-five years but had an initial period of validity of ten years with the possibility of its being renewed three times for a period of five years each time.