Methods of Financing the European Recovery Program

Abstract

The joint recovery program aims at establishing a healthy economy, independent of outside in European nations. That goal must be achieved by these nations themselves. The United States joins in the program for two limited purposes. This country will aid the European countries in their own individual and combined efforts towards recovery through financial assistance which is made contingent on demonstrated self-help and mutual cooperation in Europe. Secondly, the assistance of the United States is of extraordinary character, and will become less important the farther the European nations proceed on the road to genuine economic independence. The act, therefore, is designed to make United States assistance serve the special purposes of European recovery, as distinguished from mere relief, and to render that assistance superfluous in the end. The Congress provided three means for the accomplishment of these special purposes. It created a separate United States agency, the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), and vested its head, the Administrator, with broad powers. It prescribed specific conditions and commitments under which European countries may join the Recovery Program and be assured of continued assistance from the United States. Above all, the Congress appropriated large funds for the primary purpose of financing exports from Western Hemisphere countries to the participating countries in Europe.