840.50/5–1945: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 20—2:56 a.m.]
5058. 1. The European Coal Organization was established yesterday at a meeting attended by representatives of UK, US, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Denmark and Turkey. The representatives of all these countries expressed the willingness of their countries to join except those of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia who said that they had no authority to participate and would have to report the results of the meeting to their Governments and await instructions. The representatives of Greece, Norway and Denmark said they were sure their Governments would participate but they had not yet received formal instructions. The Soviet had previously sent a note to the UK indicating that they did not propose to attend the meeting.
2. Ronald, who presided, said that the UK Government was convinced that transport and fuel problems were among the most urgent matters affecting Europe today. He recalled the steps already taken regarding UMA and the provisional ECITO and pointed out the close connection between coal problems and transport problems.
3. German coal and coal mining machinery, he said, naturally play a considerable role in European coal problems. This raised immediate [Page 1452] difficulties, since the Allied Armies were not yet in position and the Allied Control machinery was not yet in its stride. Also an agreed reparations policy had not yet been reached. One of the chief problems facing them was how to coordinate or reconcile the provision of the wherewithal to live today with compensation for the wrongs of yesterday. This was a difficult problem but it was not for ECO to solve it. Its solution depended on decisions on fundamental policy matters. Pending these decisions, the precise functions of ECO could not be determined.
4. However, Ronald continued, ECO was concerned with the fact that in the meantime coal must move and the immediate job was to decide how much could be done in the common interest now without prejudice to future decisions on policy. Possibly, in addition, ECO might be able to facilitate the application of some of those decisions. Where so much was hypothetical, no detailed constitution or definition of functions could be written and ECO would have to evolve rules as it went along.
5. Hawkins expressed US agreement with the establishment of ECO and willingness to cooperate with and participate in it. Marjolin98 referred to the complexity of the coal problem and said the French Government agreed that an international organization was needed and accepted representation on it. He touched briefly on the relations of the French to the combined Boards, but reserved the development of this point for a future working meeting of the organization. Varvaressos99 said he was quite certain the Greek Government would collaborate fully. Inland transport conditions made it impossible for Greece to obtain central European supplies. The Norwegian representative, promising fullest cooperation, emphasized the “desperate” need of coal in Norway. Brief statements were then made by other representatives on lines indicated in paragraph 1 above.
6. The meeting to establish ECO was then concluded and immediately followed by a meeting, presided over by Eaton-Griffith,1 of the representatives on ECO of the countries which had agreed to join. An account of the meeting is being sent in a separate message.
Repeated to Paris as 287, Brussels as 156, Athens as 18; Belgrade as 1.