1976 Conference of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe

Conference of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe
East German stamp commemorating the conference
Host country	German Democratic Republic
Date	June 29–30, 1976
Venue(s)	Interhotel Stadt Berlin, Alexanderplatz, East Berlin
Participants	Eastern Europe Brezhnev Ceauşescu Gierek Husák Honecker Kádár Tito Zhivkov Western Europe Carrillo Berlinguer Marchais Cunhal
Follows	1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties

Coordinates: 52°31′21″N 13°24′48″E / 52.52250°N 13.41333°E / 52.52250; 13.41333

The Conference of Communist and Workers Parties of Europe was an international meeting of communist parties, held in the city of East Berlin, capital of the communist-governed East Germany, on 29–30 June 1976. In all, 29 parties from all Europe (except Albania, Iceland and some microstates) participated in the conference.

The conference highlighted several important changes in the European communist movement. It exhibited the declining influence of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and a widening gap between the independent and orthodox camps amongst European communist parties, with the ascent of a new political trend, Eurocommunism.

Held in Moscow, the 1969 International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties was a debacle for its Soviet hosts, as several parties (most notably the Workers Party of Korea and the Workers Party of Vietnam), had boycotted the event, whilst others had used the meeting as a platform to condemn the Soviet Union's 1968 military intervention in Czechoslovakia. Following the 1969 colloquium, proposals were put forward for another international conference, with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union hoping to regain its lost prestige through such an event. However, many constituents of the world communist movement, primarily in Asia but also in Europe, were opposed to the holding of another international conference. Rather than holding a meeting representing the global communist movement, by the mid-1970s, most of the main communist parties in Europe had expressed an interest in holding a specifically European conference instead. During that decade, several political changes had occurred in Western Europe that various communist parties wanted to take advantage of; notably, Spain and Portugal had overseen the transition from right-wing military juntas to representative democracies, while the parliamentary isolation faced by the French and Italian communist parties had come to an end.