Introduction

The Executive Committee of the International Economic Association agreed in August 1974 to organise the Round Table Conference reported in this volume. Between that decision and the convening of the ‘Round Table’ at the end of June 1976, the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe had been concluded, with the signing of a Final Act committing the signatory governments ‘to promote … the expansion of their mutual trade … to encourage the expansion of trade on as broad a multilateral basis as possible … to encourage the development of industrial cooperation between the competent organisations, enterprises and firms of their countries’ and to explore the possibilities of cooperation in a number of fields of science and technology, in environmental protection and in development of transport facilities and energy and raw material resources.* In February 1976 the Chairman of the CMEA Executive Committee sent to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the EEC a proposed Draft Agreement on basic relations between the two associations. Concurrently with the East—West negotiations on the intergovernmental level and the CMEA’s framing of its proposals for an EEC-CMEA agreement, discussion and negotiation of course continued on the future of integration within each of these groupings, the IEA Round Table in Dresden coincidentally taking place only a week before the opening of a CMEA ‘summit’ meeting in Berlin, GDR. And in the background of such intra-Western, intra-Eastern and East—West discussion was the ‘North—South’ problem of trade relations and income distribution, and the proposals for a ‘New International Economic Order’ to meet the aspirations of the developing countries, discussed in several international forums including the UN General Assembly of September 1975.