Economic aspects of Helsinki

Abstract

The economic consequences of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (July 1973-August 1975) have been negligible. The so-called 'Basket II' of the CSCE Final Act, covering 'Cooperation in the field of economics, of science and technology and of the environment', took up 17 of the 53 pages of the Helsinki Final Act as published by the UK government.' Yet subsequent interest in it by governments, businessmen or commentators has been hard to discern. It has certainly aroused far less interest than has been shown in the security and humanitarian aspects of Helsinki. An authoritative and wide ranging study of the international economics of the European socialist countries, recently published, makes no mention of Helsinki.2 In his account of the Madrid follow-up meeting, Geoffrey Edwards observes that the statement on Basket II was largely agreed by July 1981, though it was not until 26 months later that the rest of the final document, covering the more contentious security and humanitarian issues, was agreed. He devotes less than two pages of a 24-page article to Basket II, and this seems to be about right, if not a shade generous.3 It is not hard to see why the economic aspect of Helsinki is seldom referred to. In the first place, economic relations between East and West in the past decade have been dominated by other influences: the aftermath of the first oil-price shock and Western stagflation; the rapid expansion of international lending, leading to an international debt crisis; the second oil-price shock, and, above all, the 180-degree alteration in the state of relations between the two superpowers. In this turmoil the security and humanitarian sections of the Helsinki Final Act at least provided statements which have served as points of reference in the discourse among the nations which participated in the Security Conference. Basket II of the Final Act has not, by and large, served this purpose. There are, I think, two reasons for this. First, the statements about economic relationships in the Helsinki Final Act are about as businesslike as the message in an average Christmas card. Secondly, there are a greater number of additional, formal intergovernmental arrangements under which East-West economic relations can be discussed than there are in the case of security and humanitarian issues. There are, for example, the UN Economic Commission for Europe; the network of bilateral joint commissions under East-West intergovernmental economic and technological cooperation agreements; EEC-Comecon negotiations; EEC-individual-Comeconcountry negotiations; and, for those Eastern nations prepared to do business with them, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).