CHAPTER 2 - FIRST DECADE OF EFTA'S REALIZATION

Abstract

This chapter reviews the first decade of EFTAs's realization. When the exploratory meetings, still confined to officials, moved to Oslo on 21 February 1959, the name European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was mentioned for the first time. Delegations from all seven countries met officially for the first time in Saltsjobaden, near Stockholm, on 1 June 1959. It took them just 13 days to agree on the framework within which EFTA was to be established. Some of the best negotiators in Europe took part. At the end of 1966, EFTA's original seven member countries and Finland, which became an associate member in 1961, were enjoying a higher average per capita income than the European Economic Community (EEC) countries. In the decade that followed the Saltsjobaden conference, EFTA had shown that a free trade area can provide a workable approach to economic integration, while the common market approach, as pursued by the EEC and aiming at an economic union, had predictably proved more difficult to work. But EFTA has also been a political triumph.