In this interview excerpt, Álvaro de Vasconcelos, co-founder and Director of the Institute for Strategic and International Studies (IEEI) in Lisbon from 1981 to 2007 and Director of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) from 2007 to 2012, describes political reactions in Portugal to the country’s application in 1977 for accession to the European Communities. He also shares his personal experience as a political exile, explaining how Portuguese political exiles who returned to the country after the fall of the Salazar dictatorship in 1974 were in favour of European integration and decolonisation.