CAB129-37 — Page 36

ANNEX C

19

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RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE AND O.E.E.C. IN THE ECONOMIC FIELD

Report by Officials

1.

We assume that it is accepted policy that the Council of Europe should not have any executive authority and, secondly, that it is the intention to make the maximum possible use of existing organisations for the discussion and carrying out of economic policies. Unless this policy is maintained there is not only danger of overlap, but the certainty of confusion and of an impossible strain on man-power resources.

2.

The Economic Committee of the Assembly has already set up four sub-committees to study specific matters and no doubt their purpose will be to advise the Assembly so that it can take an informed view of economic matters. It seems clear to us also that the Assembly will discuss all economic inttors and. that it will be wrong to try to restrict this liberty. On the other

hand governmental work on economic or any other kind of co-operation is quite outside the province of the Consultative Assembly. Any such work, assuming it were to be done in the Council of Europe at all, would properly fall to the Committee of Ministers, which is a body of governmental representativos. This body could in certain fields assume some powers of an executive character, although strictly speaking it is limited by the Statute to making recommendations to governments and asking for a report on the action taken on them. We suggest, however, that all economic work on the governmental level should be kept in O.E.E.C., though this is not to say that we should be against the Committee of Ministers, should it wish to do so, setting up some kind of sub-committee of officials for the purpose of studying the economic proposals submitted to it by the Assembly. We hope, however, that it would still be the policy of the United Kingdom representatives on such a sub- committee to try as far as possible to steer executive work in the economic field back to O.E.E.C. This is in accordance with the views provisionally expressed both by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the French Finance Minister in Washington.

3.

There should at the present stage be no question of O.E.E.C. becoming, or being regarded as, a body inferior in status to the Council of Europe. Some elements of the Consultative Assembly undoubtedly hope that the Council as a whole may eventually acquire a central position of a

supervisory character over all European organisations, whether they deal with economic or other affairs; but it is in our view much too early to accept any idea of this kind, more particularly as it is impossible to tell yet what kind of balance will be struck within the Council of Europe between the governmental and the non-governmental elements represented by the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly.

4...

In considering the relationship between the two bodies we must bear in mind the very close association of the United States administration with O.E.E.C. We must therefore be careful not to cross wires with the United States in any arrangements we may make for the relationship between O.E.E.C. and the Council of Europe.

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