In 1959, shortly after the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), another group of countries—Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom—set up a parallel trade bloc: the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The EFTA Convention, which came into force on 3 May 1960, aimed to encourage “economic expansion, full employment, the rational use of resources, financial stability and higher living standards” among its member countries, without the kind of political integration envisaged by the founding countries of the EEC.
Sixty-five years on, EFTA is now a global network, linking partners across continents through a wide array of free trade agreements and cooperative frameworks. To celebrate this anniversary, EFTA and the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) have curated an online exhibit that highlights pivotal milestones in the Association’s history.
Hosted on the HAEU’s multimedia platform, the exhibit is based on the archival holdings of EFTA deposited at the Archives in Florence. With a vast selection of photographs, videos, historical documents and newly curated material, the exhibition invites viewers to step into EFTA’s journey of cooperation and adaptation.
The exhibition opens with the political and economic climate of post-war Europe and follows the path towards the 1960 Stockholm Convention, the founding treaty of EFTA. It illustrates how EFTA emerged as a pragmatic alternative to the EEC and worked to prevent the fragmentation of Europe’s economy. Visitors can explore how this effort evolved into deeper integration culminating in the EEA Agreement, which today extends the EU’s Internal Market to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
Further chapters elaborate on EFTA’s transformation into a global trade actor, from its first free trade agreement with Spain in 1979 to an expanding network of 35 agreements with 49 partner countries worldwide. They illustrate facets of EFTA’s activities in areas such as statistics, industrial development and technical assistance, as well as its close cooperation with international organisations including the OECD, WTO and UNCTAD.
EFTA Archives at the HAEU
The EFTA fonds is preserved at the HAEU under the terms of a deposit contract signed between EFTA, represented by its then Secretary-General Kristinn F. Árnason, and the HAEU, represented by its Director Dieter Schlenker, on 10 December 2014 and 8 January 2015 respectively.
Photo: EFTA Industrial Development Fund for Portugal Steering Committee, Lisbon (Portugal), April 1978. Photo: Unknown author, HAEU, EFTA-1605_6