A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

1188 Ch. 29 • Democracy and the Collapse of Communism

period of the traditional Protestant summer marches. On April 10, 1998,
Protestant and Catholic representatives signed the Belfast Agreement (or
Good Friday Agreement), which provided for a National Assembly for North­
ern Ireland in which both religions would be represented. The people of
Northern Ireland and of the Irish Republic overwhelmingly approved the
Belfast Agreement. In December 1999, the British Parliament granted sub­
stantial power to the Northern Ireland Assembly, with a Catholic moderate
as deputy first minister and David Trimble, a Protestant, as first minister.
However, in February 2000, the British government suspended the Catholic
and Protestant power-sharing government of Northern Ireland when the
IRA refused to establish a timetable for the disarmament of its members.
The situation then began to improve dramatically. The IRA gradually
abandoned the tactics of violence, and the Catholic political organization
Sein Fein emerged as a force for conciliation. The expanding economy in
Northern Ireland, as in the Republic, gave more people a stake in peace.
Even Paisley now accepted compromise, becoming first minister of North­
ern Ireland in 2007.
Demands by ethnic minorities for independence surfaced in several coun­
tries. In Spain, Basque separatists (the ETA), sometimes hiding in the
French Basque country, have moved across what they considered an arbi­
trary frontier to attack Spanish government, army, and police installations
and to carry out assassinations. Popular support for the separatists in the
Spanish Basque region waned in the 1980s, after the constitution of 1978
recognized “autonomous communities” within Spain. However, the violent
ETA campaign has continued off and on. On the Mediterranean island of
Corsica, violent groups opposed to French rule have planted bombs and car­
ried out occasional assassinations, even as they feuded among themselves.

The Fall of Communism

In 1975, the leaders of European states gathered in Helsinki, Finland, to

sign the Helsinki Accords, which concluded the first Conference on Secu­

rity and Cooperation. All European states, with the exception of Albania,

signed the accords, which recognized as valid the national borders drawn

up after World War II. The thirty-five signatories also pledged to respect

human rights and to cooperate in economic and scientific matters. To

some critics, the Helsinki Accords seemed to recognize Soviet domination

of Eastern Europe since the war. To other observers, they were a signifi­

cant step forward because the heads of Communist states agreed in princi­

ple to respect human rights. The accords seemed a healthy pause in the

renewed tension between East and West.

Hardly anyone at the time could have anticipated the fact that, fourteen

years later, communism would collapse in Eastern Europe, bringing about

an end to the Warsaw Fact two years later, or that the Soviet Union would