User blog comment:Fegaxeyl/French Resistance, anyone?/@comment-2012579-20101229192355/@comment-257949-20101229203643

The way I had seen the TL going was that Yugoslavia and France would be the main sources of power in the Bloc, later to be joined by Italy. I was working on the assumption that Yugoslavia remains a single nation up to the present day. They would balance each other's power and make it even more of a 'third option' in Europe: whilst Western nations were led by the USA, and Eastern nations were led by the USSR, there would be no clear leader in the Southern Europe Bloc. Imagine it like the OTL relationship between France and Germany in EU politicking.

However, if Yugoslavia built up special relationships between itself, Hungary and Czechoslovakia (and possibly Bulgaria, Romania and Greece), France may be tempted to create its own special relationships: the Spanish states you described (which would likely appear around the 1970s and 80s).

However, given that the Southern Bloc would see itself first and foremost as a mediator between East and West, any fracturing and establishment of separate 'special relationships' would likely come after the end of the Cold War, which I assume would end no later than it did OTL. This also depends on the ATL development of the EEC/EU.