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The Secretariat of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and European Economic Integration: The First Ten Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Jean Siotis
Jean Siotis
Affiliation:
Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, and a consultant for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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Extract

Before entering into the substance of our subject it would be useful to define three terms which appear in this article and which bear differing connotations in the writings of political scientists working in the field of international organization. These are: integration, international secretariat, and executive action.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , Spring 1965 , pp. 177 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1965

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References

1 See, in particular, his article “International Integration: The European and the Universal Process,” International Organization, Summer 1961 (Vol. 15, No. 3), pp. 366–392Google Scholar, and his forthcoming volume Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1965), 485 pp.Google Scholar

2 This definition is based on the following description of the integrative process which appears in an unpublished document recently prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:

In considering a possible conceptual framework one is inevitably led to the work of Karl Deutsch and Ernst Haas on the integrative process either through a conscious effort at community building or through the unplanned growth of coincidence of interest. The integrative process as we use the term here might roughly be defined as that in which consensus formation tends to become the dominant characteristic of relations among actors in a system. This process finds institutional expression, according to the well-known thesis of Haas, when the dominant method of settling disputes among the members of an organization is by upgrading the common interest.

3 For a general discussion of the problems related to an international secretariat, see Jean, Siotis, Essai sur le secrétariat international (Publications de l'Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1963), 273 pp.Google Scholar

4 The term “function” as used in this context should be distinguished from the intended purpose of an institution as expressed in its constitution or in subsequent resolutions. The functions and the intended purposes may, but do not necessarily, coincide.

5 The definition of this term which we proposed earlier should be qualified at this stage by indicating our view that the range of particular sectors of interstate relations which are ailected by the integrative processes occurring in the international system is proportionate to the degree of homogeneity of the system. The high degree of homogeneity is not only conducive to an intensive process of integration but also to the horizontal extension of the range of sectors of interstate relations where these processes occur, while in a heterogeneous system the integrative processes occur, with varying intensity, in certain limited sectors of interstate relations. Finally, we consider that the processes of integration and disintegration always occur simultaneously and that they are simply the two dialectical opposites of interactor relations in all international systems.

6 Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, Chapter 4.Google Scholar

7 For the purposes of this article it may be useful to indicate that we consider that the state of an international system is determined by the following dependent variables: 1) the field of the system; 2) the identity of the actors in the system; 3) the hierarchy which determines interactor relations; 4) the means and content of interactor communications; and 5) the degree of homogeneity of the system.

8 UN Document E/ECE/291, Appendix A. ECE was established under Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Resolution 36 (IV) of March 28, 1947.

9 Although the term “integration” was not used in the Commission's Terms of Reference, the various interpretations of the Terms by the Executive Secretary contain sufficient indications that in fact the ultimate aim of ECE was to promote integration as we defined it earlier in this article. As an example we can Cite Gunnar Myrdal's statement on August 3, 1954, when, during the 825th meeting of ECOSOC's eighteenth session, he told delegates:

Our Inland Transport Committee is proud of the fact that it has been the centre for practically all the real work of European integration in the transport field accomplished since the war.

Similar statements were made by the Executive Secretary on many occasions, particularly in regard to the activities of the Coal Committee and the various initiatives of the Secretariat in the field of intra-European trade. In his Hobhouse Lecture Myrdal spoke in fact of integration when he told his audience:

If national propaganda, plus some sort of research and, more generally, the contacts made possible on different levels between government officials which serve as a clearing system for ideas and information represent the minimum level of national policy interests of the individual governments in upholding international organizations, the maximum level is naturally the reaching of agreements on concerted action. … Reaching this higher level of international co-operation assumes a political process where in the end the individual governments choose to agree on something of material interest.

(Realities and Illusions in Regard to Inter-Governmental Organizations [L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Trust Lecture, No. 24] [London: Oxford University Press, 1955], p. 7.)Google Scholar

10 Opening statement of the Executive Secretary on May 9, 1949, to the fourth session of ECE, P. 14.

11 UN Document E/ECE/148, p. 2.

12 UN Document E/EOE/159, p. 5.

13 Opening statement of the Executive Secretary on May 9, 1949, to the fourth session of ECE, p. 1.

14 Myrdal, , Realities and Illusions in Regard to Inter-Governmental Organizations, p. 6.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., pp. 21–22.

16 Ibid., p. 22.

17 In his opening statement on May 9, 1949, to the fourth session of ECE the Executive Secretary told delegates: “I can only speak as the servant of you all and as a technical representative of your common interests.”

18 See above, p. 178. We have chosen to concentrate on the Secretariat's participation in decision making because this aspect of its executive action is the most controversial, in the case of ECE the implementation by the Secretariat of decisions adopted by the multilateral bodies has never become the object of great controversy.

19 The permanent missions in Geneva or the foreign ministries directly are naturally kept informed of such initiatives, and copies of correspondence addressed to national administrations are always sent to them.

20 The United Kingdom has probably been the one Western country most reluctant to accept these practices.

21 See above, pp. 182–187.

22 The Executive Secretary has from time to time taken the responsibility for calling off scheduled meetings, or postponing them, when it was felt that they could not have yielded results important enough to warrant the costs and work involved. The governments have always afforded the Secretariat full backing in carrying out this responsibility.

(UN Document E/ECE/291, Chapter 1, p. 6.)

23 Particularly in the cases of the Committee on the Development of Trade and of the Industry and Materials Committee in 1949–1950.

24 These figures were given to us by competent ECE officers in June 1964.

25 UN Document E/ECF/291, Chapter 14, p. 1.

26 Ibid., p. 10.

27 The assumption was that, on the basis of its intimate knowledge of the developments in the coal market as well as the attitudes of the governments, the secretariat would make a decision closely corresponding to the agreements the governments would have reached had they met for this purpose.

(Myrdal, , Realities and Illusions in Regard to Inter-Governmental Organizations, p. 23.)Google Scholar

28 We are thinking here in particular of the better volumes in the Carnegie Endowment series on member states and the United Nations and of Max Beloff's work on the impact of international institutions on British government and administration.

29 Because most of the information we have at our disposal covers the period up to 1959–1960, the answer to this question is based essentially on the first ten years of the ECE experience.

30 David Wightman has written that there is one important factor making for cohesion, namely a measure of homogeneity in political outlook on current economic problems. As each member of the Division has already rejected or embraced certain broad approaches no time is lost in wrangling over fundamental questions of principle, such as the merits or demerits of free trade. In this sense, and in this sense alone, appointments to the Division are partly political in character.

(Economic Co-operation in Europe. A Study of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe [London: Stevens & Sons Limited, 1956], pp. 69–70.)Google Scholar

31 Such opposing views were presented in 1949 by the Steel and the Research and Planning Divisions. For a brief discussion of these methods of consensus formation, see UN Document E/ECE/291, Chapter 14, pp. 8–9.

32 Economic and Social Council Official Records (14th session), Supplement No. 5, p. 21.

33 Economic and Social Council Official Records (14th session), Supplement No. 5.

34 One of the first such studies to be presented was devoted to the possibilities of exchanging electric power resources between West Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. It was submitted to the Electric Power Committee at its seventh session in September 1950, but the East-West tension which resulted from the Korean War made it impossible for the Committee to consider such a project. Similarly, in the early fifties, the Secretariat took the initiative in the preparation of the plans and in the negotiations which led in May 1954 to the conclusion of the agreement between Austria and Yugoslavia on the coordinated exploitation of the resources of the Drava River. We have chosen however to discuss the Yougelexport project because of the complexity of the problems that were raised and of the impetus given to the negotiations, at least during their first phase, as a result of the Secretariat's active participation.

35 See above, pp. 177–178.

36 We should, however, stress once again that member governments were not always satisfied with the methods and techniques used by the Secretariat to promote what it considered to be the general interest of Europe. In determining the content of this general interest Myrdal was always careful to take into consideration the avowed or implied policies of member states, and he rarely if ever overstepped the strict limits imposed upon his action by these policies. But, in spite of this caution, the Secretariat regularly came under fire.