Organization for European Economic Cooperation

A report on the work of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, issued in October 1948, summarized progress of the organization so far and the problems which it still faced. Stating that the organization was still on the threshold of European cooperation and that the most difficult problems still remained, the report defined OEEC's task as the achievement, by 1952, of a “satisfactory European economy without extraordinary outside aid.†The work of OEEC since its inception had been hampered by the facts that it was the first international organization of its kind, that it had been so quickly forced into programming aid requirements of participating countries that there had been no time for organizational problems, and that during a fairly long initial period it had not had close contact with the United States Economic Cooperation Administration since neither the administrator nor his special representative in Europe had been appointed. Despite these hindrances, however, OEEC had drawn up programs covering aid requirements of the nineteen member nations for the third and fourth quarters of 1948, the first annual program, a long-term program, and a first progress report on cooperation and economic recovery. OEEC had also undertaken to recommend to ECA actual distribution of aid between participating countries, a task which it was originally assumed would belong to ECA.