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ANNEX 'A'

Pagerate₤1097EUROPE: CONSULTATIVE 31097

RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE COMMITTEE OF MINISTERS ON ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

PREAMBLE

1. The Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe pledging itself to promote a policy of full employment and à rising standard of life, warns the peoples of Europe that millions among us will soon go hungry and unemployed unless we act at once to re-establish the economic equilbrium between. Europe and North America.

2. The most urgent task is to pay for the food and raw materials which at present have to be bought in North America. The necessary dollars can only be found if a fresh effort is made on both sides of the Atlantic. The countries of Europe must increase their productivity and reduce their costs and selling prices, so as to adapt themselves to the hard facts of the post war world. On their side the U.S.A., which recognises the need for Europe to sell more to them, should encourage these imports by every possible means and in particular by lowering its customs tariffs.

3.

The free nations of Europe can do much to save themselves by mutual help.

Together with their overseas associates and territories they represent a population which as regards numbers and skills is the equal of any other population in the world. If the peoples of Europe are weak to-day it is because they are divided, but if they have the vision and courage to unite their markets, they can lower their costs and selling prices, sell more to each other and more than recover their lost prosperity.

4. The economic union of free Europe should not create an exclusive trading area. On the contrary, the door would be open to the exchange of goods and services of fair terms with all the world.

5. The realisation of economic union would include the abolition by stages of restrictions on the movement of men, money and goods; the co-ordination of investments, of basic industries, of agriculture, and the gradual harmonising of national legislation in the field of social policy and taxation.

6. This union would include the free circulation of men, goods and capital. It implies the rapid establishment of a multilateral system of payments, leading to the restoration of convertibility of European currencies, with one another, subject to the safeguards necessary to enable movements of capital to be controlled during the transitional period.

7. The building up of such a union of free peoples implies central planning, combined with a maximum degree of individual liberty. The central planning must be by consent, and the liberty must be used for the good of all.