Intra-European Payments Committee (OEEC)

Date of Founding

Date of Abolition

Location

On 21 June 1948, the Intra-European Payments Committee gathered for the first time. Many of its members had already been active in the Committee of Financial Experts that had worked in the Committee on European Economic Cooperation (CEEC) over the summer of 1947, and had come up with the first intra-European payments mechanism: the Agreement on Multilateral Monetary Compensation of November 1947. The goal of the committee was to study the payments difficulties that came up between members of the OEEC, and to make recommendations to the Council. Most of its work, therefore, was of a very technical nature.

Within the Intra-European Payments Committee, financial experts represented their national governments. Some of them had already had a long career in international finance, and some of them had already met each other wartime London. Many members of the OEEC’s payments committee favored multilateral payments arrangements over bilateral clearing mechanisms.

From 1948 to 1954 the committee was under joint chairmanship of the Italian delegate Pietro Stoppani and the Belgian delegate Hubert Ansiaux.