‘Integration, Nobody Knows What It Means’: European Cooperation and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), 1947–56

Abstract

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), founded in 1947, predates both the Marshall Plan and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The all-European UNECE was, in fact, the first permanent international organisation formed after the Second World War dedicated to economic cooperation in Europe. In public perception and in the historiography on European integration, however, its role is marginal at best. The chapter aims to contextualise the UNECE in the history of economic cooperation in postwar Europe. It argues that the pan-European UNECE was a ‘suppressed historical alternative’ to (Western) European integration projects such as the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and the European Community/Union (EC/EU).