Margaret Thatcher's European policy (1979-1990)

In the present article, the author studies the European direction of Margaret Thatcher's foreign policy based on an analysis of the transcripts of the House of Commons meetings. It was during this period that the foundations of modern contradictions with the European Union were laid, which led to Brexit. The conducted analysis allowed to reveal the specifics of the British Prime Minister's approaches to this area of foreign policy interaction at each of the stages of cooperation. At the first stage, there was a clear objective to reduce the country's contribution to the European Economic Community budget; at the second stage, an attempt was made to direct EEC development exclusively into the sphere of economic cooperation; the third stage, during which the mistakes of the previous phase were taken into account, was characterized by the aggravation of foreign policy interaction with EEC partners, which at the domestic political level led to Thatcher's resignation.