Zuckerman Archive: Organisation for European Economic Co-operation

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Scope and Content

The contents of this series are complementary to those in series SZ/ACSP, SZ/NATO, and SZ/OECD, and are chiefly concerned with the question of the supply of scientific and technical personnel.

Administrative / Biographical History

The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), was established on 16 April 1948 as the European element of the system set up to administer Marshall Aid (the Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA) being the US element). The OEEC's objectives were to liberalize trade and to promote the growth of production in Western Europe; the USSR having rejected the Marshall Plan, Eastern Europe was perforce excluded. Britain was one of the original 16 members of the OEEC. (In 1960 the OEEC was superseded by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD), which included the US and Canada.

In October 1956 a conference was held in Vienna under the auspices of the OEEC, on Scientific Manpower for Applied Research. The subject was then taken up by the OEEC Manpower Committee in March 1957, as a result of which it was decided to survey member states to determine what efforts were being made to recruit and educate more scientists. A working party, Working Party No. 25 of the OEEC Council, was set up to ensure that member states supplied the information required by the survey. It met for the first time on 24 July 1957, with Henri Longchambon of France in the chair. Solly Zuckerman had been appointed as the British delegate but in the event E.D.T. Jourdain deputised for him. The membership of the Working Party included most of the members of the NATO Task Force for Further Action by NATO in the Field of Scientific and Technical Co-operation, (the exceptions being Joe Koepfli and Solly Zuckerman).

The survey was completed by the end of 1957 and in January 1958 the Working Party began to draft a programme of action for submission to the Council.

The Working Party was replaced by a Governing Committee on Scientific and Technical Personnel to oversee the programme. The Committee on Scientific and Technical Personnel met for the first time on 19 June 1958. The UK was represented on the Committee through the Lord President's Office, the first representative being Roger Quirk.