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The International Chamber of Commerce and the Creation of a Pan-European Economic Space During the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2025

Thomas David ,
Pierre Eichenberger  and
Sandrine Kott Open the ORCID record for Sandrine Kott [Opens in a new window]
Thomas David
Affiliation:
Institue of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Pierre Eichenberger
Affiliation:
Institue of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Sandrine Kott*
Affiliation:
Département d’Histoire générale, University of Geneva, Switzerland History Department, New York University, New York, USA
*
Corresponding author: Sandrine Kott; Email: sandrine.kott@unige.ch
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Abstract

We examine the construction of a pan-European economic space from the perspective of the activities of the Liaison Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries. We make three important contributions. First, we show that the Cold War does not mark the end of economic exchanges between Eastern and Western Europe but is part of a longer history in which Eastern Europe was an economic periphery of Western Europe. Second, we emphasise that some Eastern European actors from Czechoslovakia and Hungary used the Committee to develop their contacts with the West and gain some independence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Western European businessmen also sought to expand their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, to the detriment of their American competitors. Third, we highlight the complex relationship between states and business in both blocs and the porosity between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ issues during the Cold War.

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Contemporary European History , Volume 35 , 2026 , e42
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Introduction

On 1 March 1952, the British magazine The Economist published a sceptical article about the International Economic Conference that the Soviet Union had pledged to host the following month. ‘The Cold War cannot go on for ever’, the magazine conceded, and many businessmen might consider going to Moscow to seize the opportunity to develop commercial contacts with the socialist bloc; however, the Soviet Union’s intention was ‘propaganda, and nothing but propaganda’. To escape that trap, businessmen should refrain and stay away from such a conference. Instead, the article suggested, the International Chamber of Commerce should take over the task of organising an economic conference together with partners in socialist countries, ‘in such a way as to preclude the chances of propaganda’.Footnote 1

Archival sources do not say whether members of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) took note of the British magazine’s suggestion, but the Chamber was indeed busy at the time defining its position on East–West trade. Twenty days after the article was published in The Economist, however, the US Council of the ICC – the committee that represented US business in the ICC – circulated a note to the other ICC members that reflected the restrictive position of the US government in East–West trade.Footnote 2 In the ICC Council, while European members were keen to underline the importance of East–West trade, US members took a more sceptical position.

Twelve years later, in December 1964, delegates from a handful of Western European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) met with officials from the chambers of commerce of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the first ‘Exploratory Meeting’ of what would later become the ICC Liaison Committee with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries (henceforth, the ICC Liaison Committee).Footnote 3 From the exploratory talks limited to technical matters initiated in 1964, the committee soon broadened its thematic and geographical scope. While US delegates attended only sporadically until 1971 and more regularly thereafter, the Liaison Committee remained centred on Europe. The Committee brought together European business elites from capitalist and socialist countries several times a year to discuss, at first unofficially and after 1969 officially, East–West trade issues. A labyrinthine structure of subcommittees and working groups was developed to study first customs procedures and then other issues such as commercial arbitration (which emerged among the Liaison Committee’s subjects in the 1960s), banking techniques, environmental issues (both from the 1970s) and, in the next decade, know-how transfers and privatisation. Although this committee was active throughout the Cold War – it was officially disbanded in 1991 – those encounters have so far remained unnoticed by historians. The history of East–West trade during the Cold War has been studied, but the ways in which European business elites from capitalist and socialist states interacted and exchanged remain little known.

We build on the way in which historians have begun to study the ongoing economic exchanges, connections and areas of cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe (including the neutral states) during the Cold War, with particular emphasis on the role of international organisations and non-state actors, which has often been neglected in comparison to that of states.Footnote 4 Some studies have pointed out the importance of the diplomatic and economic role of export bodies in the East and chambers of commerce and business associations in the West in establishing contacts between the two European economic systems.Footnote 5 Business historians have focused on case studies of Western companies investing in socialist countries in the East.Footnote 6 Others have looked at the conditions under which these investments were made possible, by looking at how companies in Eastern Europe operate.Footnote 7 Historians have also shown that business associations organised an influential ‘parallel diplomacy’ developing economic exchanges between capitalist countries and China, suggesting that such patterns might apply to other contexts.Footnote 8 Scholars, however, have tended to focus on bilateral relations or exchanges between a limited number of countries. This article helps to address this shortcoming by focusing on the ICC’s multilateral action and aims to make a threefold contribution.

First, we add to the historiography that demonstrates the continued existence of economic exchanges between Western and Eastern European countries despite the limitations imposed by the Cold War, particularly during the 1950s. The discussions within the ICC and the activities it carried out from the 1960s onward allow us to define the contours of a pan-European economic space.Footnote 9 We understand this space as the sum of exchanges, interdependencies and hierarchies within the European continent that persisted beyond the Cold War divide as part of a longer history in which Eastern Europe has been made and studied as the first economic periphery of Western Europe.Footnote 10 But, as we will see, it was also the result of emerging common interests between various nations as well as broader convergences. It is therefore not surprising that in this area and in the continuity of the inter-war period, countries such as Germany (East and West), Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which had a major interest in these economic exchanges, played a central role, while the Soviet Union and the United States remained secondary players.

Second, as discussed in the introduction of this special issue, this article contributes to a historiography that has emphasised that the history of this period cannot be reduced to a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. As we will show, Eastern European actors used the Committee to develop their contacts with the West and gain some independence from the Soviet Union. Western European businessmen also sought to expand their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, to the detriment of their US competitors. Third, by identifying little-known economic actors such as chambers of commerce and ICC national committees, we highlight the porosity between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ issues during the Cold War. In this respect, the ICC is very interesting as its members were multipositioned actors who were simultaneously connected to various political and economic networks at the national, regional or local level. Moreover, it maintained close contact with intergovernmental agencies – such as the League of Nations during the inter-war period and UN agencies after 1945, as well as with the European CommunityFootnote 11 – which contributed to its strong legitimacy in international affairs. While historians have started to uncover how the ICC sustained the development of a private economic diplomacy, no study investigates its role in East–West exchanges during the Cold War.Footnote 12 As this article aims to show, the inextricable link between political and economic actors displayed in the ICC was a feature and a condition of the constitution of this pan-European economic space over the period of the Cold War.

Our analysis is based on multi-site archival research: in the records of six ICC national committees, the archives of the Chamber of Commerce of Hungary and public archives of the former East and West Germany. We supplement these records with pointed inquiries in the archives of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). This multi-site archival research allows us to sketch the internal debates in East Germany and Hungary about the contacts within the ICC; we will also devote particular attention to the West German economic and political actors who have historically been involved in close relations with Eastern Europe.

The article begins by describing contacts between Eastern and Western Europe as perceived by the ICC in the 1950s, placing them in the context of Eastern Europe’s longer dependence on the Western European economy. We then analyse the first technical discussions between 1964 and 1975, a ‘decade of détente’, which ultimately led to the signing of the Helsinki Accords.Footnote 13 We will then look at the last fifteen years, marked by the Committee’s co-presidency between Eastern and Western European actors and a rapid shift towards support for joint ventures, international loans and privatisation, all features of the formation of this pan-European area.

The ‘Businessmen’s International’ and Socialist Countries before 1964

Founded in 1920, the ICC operated as an association of national committees representing their national business elites. Centralised associations of industrial, trading and financial firms as well as large urban chambers of commerce formed ICC national committees representing national capitalist interests within this private international organisation. These national committees elected delegates to the ICC Council and in technical committees. Every two years, the national committees also nominated delegates to a congress that elected a new president and passed resolutions. Between congresses, ICC’s headquarters in Paris, the Council and the Executive Committee, as well as the national committees (which met regularly and were also supported by secretariats), would work to implement these resolutions.Footnote 14

Meanwhile, since the times of the League of Nations, the ICC had maintained close contacts with diverse international organisations. In 1946, the ICC was granted the highest consultative status (A) with the UN and worked with the Economic and Social Council and its regional commissions, enabling it to speak on behalf of business on international trade issues. The ICC’s involvement as a consultative body to the UN was further strengthened by the establishment of an Economic Consultative Committee in 1969 that institutionalised annual contacts between the Chamber and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and other heads of UN agencies active in economic fields.Footnote 15 The work of the ICC developed into two recognised types of activity: influencing governments and international organisations, on the one hand, and the ‘practical work’ of standardisation, codes and best practices in the business world, on the other.Footnote 16 The technical committees, of which there were forty-one in 1950 – with variations over time – are at the heart of the ICC’s activities. They loosely mirrored the specialised agencies of the League of Nations and of the UN on practical matters of international business such as customs formalities, banking techniques or taxation, a practice sometimes referred to as ‘diplomacy of technics’.Footnote 17

Representatives of the Soviet Union had been present at some conferences organised by the ICC in 1944 and 1946,Footnote 18 but this brief window of opportunity closed quickly, confirming the way in which the ICC had repeatedly rejected initiatives by the Moscow chamber of commerce, which had approached the ICC’s Paris headquarters in the 1930s and in the 1950s to join the organisation.Footnote 19 Rejecting the affiliation of countries representing about a third of humanity was not an easy decision for the ICC, which usually craved new members. In the 1930s, as in the 1950s, this led to tense debates. In 1954, the ICC’s general secretary, Frenchman Pierre Vasseur, expressed a favourable view on the admission of the Soviet Union, mentioning that it ‘would mean a ‘universal consecration of the importance of the ICC’. He stressed, however, that this position could create tensions within the ICC: ‘To accept a Soviet National Committee among us is to provoke the Americans to resign’. This would be ‘the end of the ICC’. It would also mean ‘putting the West German National Committee in the position of seeing the creation of a parallel East German National Committee. Under no circumstances can the creation of a single National Committee be envisaged’.Footnote 20

Indeed, the tension between private economic interests and Cold War political logics shaped the policies of the ICC’s German Committee. Since the end of the nineteenth century, German growth had depended on trade and exports and German employers regarded Eastern European countries as a ‘reserved market’ to which they exported manufactured goods.Footnote 21 In the 1930s, Eastern Europe accounted for 20 per cent of Germany’s international trade, while the role of German investment was often crucial for small Eastern European countries. This economic involvement went hand in hand with increasing German political influence that culminated dramatically during the Nazi regime. In the second half of the 1940s, some West German employers who had previously been heavily involved in these exchanges complained that their part had been reduced to almost nothing.Footnote 22

These economic developments presented new challenges to the West German position during the Cold War. The foreign policy of Konrad Adenauer – who was Federal Chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963 – was indeed closely monitored by the US State Department, which exerted political and economic pressure on the Western German government to break off all relations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. This break with the East was in tension with the interests of specific West German export sectors. Their representatives strongly believed that the prosperity of their businesses and the reconstruction of the West German economy depended on the revival of these privileged links with the East. Fearing that businessmen in other countries could take advantage of the German withdrawal, they persuaded West German economics minister Ludwig Erhard to develop relations, mostly secretly, with Eastern bloc countries. In 1952 a group of employers set up the Ost-Auschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft (Eastern Committee of the German economy), with privileged links to the economic ministry.Footnote 23 The committee was powerful enough to negotiate favourable trade agreements with the Soviet Union and other Central European countries before the advent of the Ostpolitik in the 1970s when, with the election of Willy Brandt as chancellor in 1969, the West German government established diplomatic relations with the Eastern bloc countries and intensified its commercial, industrial and financial exchange.Footnote 24

It is therefore not surprising that when the president of the chamber of commerce of the Soviet Union asked informally in the mid-1950s whether it could join the ICC, West German members of the ICC pointed out that it was a ‘highly political matter’ that had to be discussed with the Foreign Minister, Heinrich von Brentano.Footnote 25 The president of the Bundesverband der deutschen Industrie (the West German Employers’ Organization), Fritz Berg, displayed strong anti-communist arguments and opposed that idea. Hermann Abs, one of the heads of the Deutsche Bank, was also strongly opposed, arguing that the accession of the Soviet Union to the ICC ‘was not compatible with its principles’.Footnote 26 These statements can also point to other factors. Both Fritz Berg and Hermann Abs – as other West German businessmen after 1945 – had been heavily involved in the Nazi organisation of the economy. This could contribute to explaining their reluctance to work with communist authorities.Footnote 27 Conversely, within the West German ICC Committee, the most vocal advocate in favour of Soviet Union’s accession was Abraham Frowein, a former president of the German National Committee of the ICC, who had been forced to withdraw from the presidency of the German ICC Committee by the Nazis in 1938.Footnote 28 Frowein saw ‘no danger in Russia becoming a member’Footnote 29.

Older or Cold War opposition to communism finally prevailed in the West German committee and the ICC. In May 1958, the ICC Council rejected any formal membership from communist countries, arguing that ICC members ‘must be committed to the principles of free enterprise’.Footnote 30 However, this stance did not prevent the ICC from intensifying informal contacts with Eastern European representatives of middle sized countries at the end of the 1950s to the point that in May 1960, the ICC decided that the organisation of ‘ad hoc meetings on technical matters’ between the ICC and ‘representatives of the collectivist economies was permissible’.Footnote 31 In this perspective UNECE played an important role.

Created in 1947, the UNECE quickly developed a strategy of focusing on depoliticised, technical issues. In so doing, it became an expert organisation that during the Cold War remained an important ‘point of contact between the blocs’.Footnote 32 UNECE’s trade committee was one of its most active technical committees, providing a platform for bilateral and multilateral exchanges on specific trade problems and for exploring trade opportunities. From 1954, ICC observers attended the meetings of this trade committee and were thus able to meet delegates from Eastern Europe.Footnote 33

In the second half of the 1950s, the ICC was also closely associated with another UNECE initiative aimed at intensifying contacts between the two blocs. From 1954 and across six years, the UNECE trade committee crafted a ‘European Convention on International Commercial Arbitration’ designed to facilitate the resolution of legal disputes between Western private enterprises and socialist institutions holding a monopoly on trade. This convention was enacted in 1961.Footnote 34 Commercial arbitration was a theme dear to the ICC as it had created an International Court of Arbitration as far back as 1923. Therefore, it was closely involved in the project of a ‘European Convention’, commenting on its drafts, sometimes at the request of the UNECE or of national governments.Footnote 35 The final version of the Convention embodied the ‘views put forward’ by the ICC Commission on International Commercial Arbitration.Footnote 36

Thus, while the ICC had denied formal membership to communist countries, the UNECE did provide a platform for cooperation. This desire for closer links was also expressed by economic actors in Eastern Europe. First, the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe had experienced an economic miracle in the 1950s. Their leaderships gained confidence in their ability to compete economically with the West. Second, as technology became an important issue for socialist governments in the 1960s, trade was seen as a means of gaining access to Western technology. Third, in Eastern Europe, the drive to expand trade relations with the West may also have been motivated by the desire to reduce economic dependence on the Soviet Union.Footnote 37 Finally, all socialist countries were amid economic reforms that favoured expanding trade relations with Western Europe. In April 1961, a delegation of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, headed by its president Ödön Kallós, visited the United States – John F. Kennedy had just been elected president – and Canada to develop economic relations with both countries.Footnote 38 Two years later, the London Chamber of Commerce was approached by the Czech and Hungarian chambers of commerce about participating in the work of the ICC. According to the Director of the London Chamber, which was an important member of the ICC UK committee, Odon Kallós, ‘a very good friend’ of the United Kingdom – he had been educated in Budapest and in London – inquired as to whether it would be feasible for the ‘Iron Curtain’ Chambers to participate in technical-level discussions with the ICC.Footnote 39

The cooperation through UNECE with Eastern European representatives and the steps taken by the latter to strengthen ties with their partners in the West, fuelled by the desire to resume business on both sides, led the ICC to open informal talks in 1963.Footnote 40

1964–1975: From Exploratory Talks to the Liaison Committee

In December 1964, delegates from Austria, Belgium, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom met with officials from the chambers of commerce of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the first Exploratory Meeting, which later became the ICC Liaison Committee with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries. Talks took place ‘in a most friendly atmosphere’Footnote 41 but followed a very prudent pace: the ICC insisted that meetings should have an ‘exploratory nature’ and were first restricted to discussions with the chambers of commerce of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which initiated the talks on the Eastern side, with possible extensions; discussions should be ‘confined’ to technical issues, ‘excluding any matters of commercial policy’.Footnote 42

Despite this cautious start and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which disturbed its work for several months, the committee grew in importance over the next decade. Its work was gradually formalised and institutionalised within the ICC. The Exploratory Meeting between the chambers of commerce of Hungary and Czechoslovakia became official in 1969 and was renamed the ICC Liaison Committee with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries.

The composition of the committee was ‘considerably strengthened’ after 1964 as the number of countries participating in these meetings increased.Footnote 43 Soviet participation took place in two stages. Mikhail Nesterov, the president of the Soviet Union chamber of commerce, was invited to the ICC congress in Delhi in 1965 and in Montreal two years later. In 1967, he attended the exploratory meeting with other Soviet delegates, and after that the Soviet presence was constant. Delegates of the Chamber of Commerce of Bulgaria and Poland joined gradually from 1966, first in technical subcommittees, then in the exploratory meetings. Romanian delegates participated from 1969, first with observer status, then in a more official position. East German finally joined in 1973.Footnote 44

On the ICC side, many European countries participated in these exploratory meetings from the beginning. Gradually, participation grew significantly as the committee included not only members of the International Bureau of Chambers of Commerce (IBCC/BICC in French), an international bureau of chambers of commerce created by the ICC at the beginning of the 1950s, but also representatives of other ICC committees. Non-European countries also began to participate. In October 1966, a US representative, Frederick Griffiths, attended a session of the Committee for the first time. In 1971, representatives of the United States started taking part officially in the meetings of the Liaison Committee (they had sat as simple observers to that date).Footnote 45 This move was in line with US government’s more favourable stance towards East–West trade in the early 1970s.Footnote 46

Between 1964 and 1975, the programme gradually expanded as the number of topics dealt with by the committee steadily increased, reflecting the expansion of economic relations between capitalist and socialist countries.Footnote 47 The first topic the Council decided to focus on in 1964 was the ECS (Échantillons commerciaux/Commercial Samples) and ATA (Admission temporaire/Temporary Admission) systems, which stemmed from a 1952 GATT initiative and an international convention to ease the temporary import of commercial samples and advertising materials. Chambers of commerce, particularly those in the IBCC and ICC, played a crucial role in issuing ECS carnets.Footnote 48 As border formalities were reduced to a minimum, these carnets became very popular and a symbol of the practical services chambers of commerce could provide. As early as February 1964, the Chamber of Commerce of Czechoslovakia demanded to join the ECS and ATA systems, which it did in March of the same year. The diffusion in socialist countries of those carnets became the first achievement and a fixture of the Liaison Committee in the 1960s. As a West German representative wrote in 1969 in a report on the discussions of this committee: ‘The issue of ATA carnets is constantly on the agenda’.Footnote 49

In the field of international arbitration, the committee also played an important role in discussing ‘how the respective arbitration systems function in East and West, the difficulties, problems and also advantages which can derive therefrom in specific cases or types of cases’.Footnote 50 These discussions led to tangible results. In 1961, the ICC Arbitration Court had to settle only one dispute involving an enterprise from a socialist country (Czechoslovakia); ten years later, it had to deal under its rules ‘with an increasing number of cases involving an enterprise which is a national of a socialist country; such cases now represent 15 to 16% of all requests submitted each year to the Court’.Footnote 51 Commercial arbitration came on the agenda in April 1967, along with international trade fairs, distribution and marketing research. The private commercial arbitration provided by the ICC became all the more important in East–West talks as it began to include disputes between private businessmen and states.Footnote 52

In 1971, an Ad Hoc Working Party on Banking Techniques was set up to discuss issues related to the financing of trade (for example, documentary credits or payment guarantees). The delegation of socialist countries in this Working Group included representatives of foreign trade banks, which specialised in handling foreign currency transactions, managing external debt and financing foreign trade that was under state monopoly.Footnote 53 This Working Group made it possible to involve banks from socialist countries in ICC activities aimed at unifying and harmonising banking techniques and practices at the international level. Therefore, financial institutes in Eastern European countries were consulted in the establishment of the 1973 ICC Uniform Rules, which were applied by banks from more than one hundred countries. In addition, under Polish initiative, the multi-lateralisation of issues such as ‘industrial cooperation’ and ‘joint ventures’ started being discussed within the ICC Liaison Committee in 1972.Footnote 54

This gradual broadening of the latter’s areas of competence went hand in hand with an intensification of its relations with the UNECE. In 1968, the executive secretary of the UNECE requested the ICC initiate an inquiry among the National Committees of the ICC and the chambers of commerce of the socialist countries regarding the practical difficulties encountered by business firms in East–West trade.Footnote 55 The Liaison Committee accepted the request as ‘business circles in both “East” and “West” were equally conceded to develop trade between the two groups of countries, and that it was consequently their role to seek to guide governments towards solutions’.Footnote 56 This collaboration continued over the following years.Footnote 57 For the UNECE, it was important to cooperate with a business organisation that had a strong legitimacy with the United Nations. In 1977, Janez Stanovnik, the Yugoslav executive secretary of the UNECE, admitted to the ICC Secretary General that ‘economic cooperation within the ECE had so far been confined to discussions between governments and that as a result many government recommendations had remained a dead letter, failing implementation by business’.Footnote 58

The formalisation and institutionalisation of the Liaison Committee between 1964 and 1975 reflected its success in many areas. As Jean Royer – a former Deputy Executive Secretary to the GATT and an ICC expert on international trade – emphasised in a 1972 summary of the collaboration of the ICC with socialist countries, ‘little by little a climate of mutual trust and tolerance grew up, making it possible to make undeniable progress and to associate the Eastern countries in multilateral initiatives which would seem to be conceivable only in private-economy countries’.Footnote 59 Bernhard S. Wheble, a British banker and the influential chairman of the Ad Hoc Working Party on Banking Techniques, also emphasised that one of the results of the first meeting of the latter was to appreciate ‘the value of personal understanding and friendship in this sphere as the basis for further useful work in the form of a two way giving and receiving’.Footnote 60 However, the committee’s work was not entirely marked by this climate of trust. Disagreements and power struggles regularly arose.

As Hans König, the general secretary of the West German committee, reported in 1971, ‘in his previous contacts with the East’, it had ‘repeatedly become apparent that the Soviet Union was relatively reluctant to intensify trade contacts, while the satellite states were much more open to this’.Footnote 61 In 1974, during an informal discussion, B.A. Borisov, president of the USSR Chamber of Commerce and Industry, expressed his dissatisfaction, saying that ‘they were not altogether satisfied with the present handling of things in the Liaison Committee’.Footnote 62 The Soviets expected that every country should be allowed to join the ICC and to participate in all the ICC technical commissions and working groups. They expected equal rights for all countries in the Liaison Committee and refused that the latter remained under the supervision of the ICC Council, in which they were not represented. In addition, they wished that trade policy could ‘take centre stage’ instead of more technical matters.Footnote 63

With the notable exception that socialist countries were not invited to join the ICC, most of these requirements were incorporated into the 1975 reform of the committee. Two co-chairmen – the Hungarian Ödön Kallós and the West German Hans Rudolph Freiherr von Schröder – were elected to formally place the two groups on an equal footing. Their profiles reflect the international experience and the multi-positionality of the businessmen of the Liaison Committee on both sides of the Wall, as well as their strong links with their governments. They also illustrate the central involvement of Hungary and West Germany in the Committee. As we have seen, Kallós had launched discussions with the ICC at the beginning of the 1960s thanks to his international profile and the economic and political importance of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce. He was the ‘Senior spokesman of the Eastern European Group’Footnote 64 in the ICC Liaison Committee from its inception to the early 1980s.Footnote 65 Just after finishing his studies, he became a director of the Elzett Hardware Manufacturing Company – a company that belonged to his father – until 1946, when he became Delegate to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) organisation in Hungary. Thereafter, he fulfilled diverse official functions as a trade diplomat and civil servant. From 1959 to 1981, he was the president of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce. In that office, he conducted a whole range of economic diplomacy missions and negotiated numerous commercial agreements with foreign countries all over the world. With the introduction of economic reforms at the end of the 1960s, the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce became an important interlocutor for its government, as he explained to the Liaison Committee in 1972. He emphasised that the Chamber acted ‘directly as an advisory body to the Council of Ministers’ and as ‘spokesman of the views of the Hungarian business community’. Therefore, ‘consultations with the Chambers of Commerce and other bodies of the Western countries could usefully help to inform governmental authorities, on a bilateral or multilateral basis, of the views of business circles as to the ways and means of developing East/West trade’.Footnote 66

When he was elected co-chairman in 1975, he received congratulations from West German Hans Rudolph Freiherr von Schröder, who had been appointed co-chairman on the Western side and who mentioned Kallós’s ‘helpful cooperation’ and their ‘excellent personal relations’.Footnote 67

For his part, Schröder joined the committee in 1966, when he became president of the IBCC. He then remained as a chairman, alone until 1975, then as a co-chairman of the committee (with Kallós) until 1982. Also an heir, Schröder was also a banker, whose family bank was particularly involved in financing foreign trade transactions, and he held key positions in the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce from the 1960s until his death in 1982.

Schröder illustrates the central role played by West German actors in the exchange between socialist and capitalist countries within the ICC. Through the Ost-Auschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft and the ICC exploratory meetings, West German businessmen had already established economic contacts with socialist economic actors. Several businessmen at the centre of the Liaison Committee’s action, such as Otto Wolf von Amerongen and Schröder, played key roles in the new West German Ostpolitik as they were present in all private and public relevant institutions that inspired that politic.Footnote 68

In 1975, the ICC Council approved new and more ambitious terms of reference for this committee, under which the latter was directed ‘to submit to business circles, governments and intergovernmental organisations recommendations, reports on measures required to promote the development of East/West trade and economic, technical and industrial cooperation based on the principles of equal rights, mutual benefit, non-discrimination and MFN treatment’. Moreover, the nomination of Kallós and Schröder as co-chairmen ensured that the new structure of the Liaison Committee reflected that ‘the two groups be placed on an equal footing’.Footnote 69 Like other transnational organisations, the ICC helped make the years 1964–75 a ‘decade of détente’, culminating in the signing of the Helsinki agreements in 1975. The ICC closely followed the negotiations of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe leading up to these agreements.Footnote 70

1975–1991: The ICC and the Development of a Pan-European Space

After the period of détente during the 1970s, US–Soviet relations became strained again and the US ICC Committee, which was in close contact with its authorities,Footnote 71 advocated at the beginning of the 1980s the dissolution of the ICC East–West Committee.Footnote 72 This was rejected by the European partners. If economic exchanges between the United States and Eastern Europe had always remained modest, many economic and political players in Eastern and Western Europe had a real interest in maintaining or even increasing these commercial relations.Footnote 73

In the 1980s, the ICC Liaison Committee became largely a pan-European space dominated by the West German representatives but bridged more largely Central–Eastern and Western economies. In 1982, the departure of Carl Henrik Winqwist, the Swedish secretary general of the ICC who had promoted ICC’s openness to the socialist countries, at first alarmed the Eastern European representatives of the ICC Liaison Committee.Footnote 74 He was replaced by Hans König, the former secretary of the German ICC Committee. The East German representative, although regretting the departure of the former, emphasised that the latter was familiar with the functioning of the Liaison Committee, as König was a regular of meetings of the Committee and had ‘been constructive on individual issues’.Footnote 75 The same year, after almost twenty years as co-chairman of the Laison Committee, Rudolf Freiherr von Schröder resigned for health reasons.Footnote 76 As his successor, the ICC appointed another representative of the German business elites: Hans-Otto Thierbach, former member of the board of directors of the Deutsche Bank. Thierbach had been a member of the ICC banking committee in the 1960s, and he was a long-time member of the Ost-Ausschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft and president of its Hungarian Circle. He was overall regarded as an expert on Central and Eastern Europe.Footnote 77

When Hans-Otto Thierbach was appointed as co-chairman of the Liaison Committee in 1982, Odon Kallós informed his Eastern European colleagues of the German banker’s profile. The latter was a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and did ‘not have a positive attitude towards the socialist countries’. But Kallós added that Thierbach and König, two German representatives holding ‘leading positions in the ICC’, could have a rather positive influence on the East–West Committee. He presented this constellation ‘as the lesser evil’. As Kallós remarked, “filling these positions with US representatives would have been less favorable”.Footnote 78

And indeed, these two nominations marked an intensification of the pan-European economic relations in the 1980s. For countries such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, it was important to maintain very close economic ties with Western European capitalist countries, especially West Germany. Their strategies of import-led growth implied financing their increasing imports of Western technology, know-how and production techniques by exporting cheap manufactured goods to Western markets, perpetuating a situation of dependence inherited from the inter-war period.Footnote 79 It is therefore not surprising that these three countries remained very active within the Liaison Committee during the 1980s. After twenty-four years as co-chairman of the committee and a brief interim, Kallós was succeeded in 1987 by the president of the Chamber of Foreign Trade of Poland, Tadeusz Zylkowski, a former director of the Polish shipping Company PŻM and Polish economic diplomat.

For Western European political and economic elites, these relations fulfilled obvious economic functions. This was particularly the case for West Germany. Since the end of the Second World War, West German economic growth had been made possible by a positive balance of payments achieved through price stability, undervalued DM and export promotion. In the 1970s, conservative West German officials and employers feared that the interventionists and expansionist responses of Western countries (the European Left in particular) to the economic crisis might threaten their model. To maintain open markets and stable prices, they played an important role in promoting restrictive monetary and anti-inflationary policies in West European states. Eastern Europe played a role in this story. Its markets were an important outlet for German firms: in the 1980s, West Germany was the main economic partner of the Eastern European socialist countries. Moreover, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, West German manufacturing firms began to invest massively in Eastern Europe, attracted by geographical proximity and lower wages. Policies aimed at facilitating joint ventures and privatisation and imposing austerity measures became a way ‘to create an attractive low-cost environment for West German capital’.Footnote 80 For West German firms, grooming economic contacts with the East, notably via the ICC, was important to secure access to Eastern European markets and labour force and to maintain the competitiveness of its export industry.

In this twofold context, the Liaison Committee’s activities intensified, contributing to the integration of the Eastern European countries into the world economy and the consolidation of a pan-European economic space.Footnote 81 From the early 1970s, Western banks, with the support of their governments, became increasingly active in Eastern Europe both through trade credits and the financing of exports and through loans to European socialist countries. As Central and Eastern European governments increasingly turned to foreign borrowing to finance their trade deficits, their debt levels became very high. With the sudden rise in interest rates at the end of the 1970s, some of these countries became insolvent. In 1981, Poland announced that it was not able to service its debt and had to turn to the IMF, which imposed policies of austerity, structural adjustment and market reforms that contributed to the collapse of the communist regime in this country.Footnote 82 The ICC Liaison Committee was involved in through its Working Party on Banking Techniques as it dealt with questions of indebtedness in the 1980s.Footnote 83 This Working Party also continued to discuss issues related to the financing of trade and to the standardisation of banking techniques.Footnote 84 Representatives of important Dutch, French, Swedish, Swiss and West German banks met with their counterparts from Central Europe to discuss the ‘international harmonization of banking practices, a major factor in facilitating the conduct of day to day transactions involved in East/West trade’.Footnote 85 The influence of this Working Party on reforms in Eastern Europe during the 1980s certainly cannot be compared with that of the IMF. However, through these regular exchanges on banking practices, the ICC contributed, in its own way, to familiarising decision-makers and bankers in Central Europe with the workings of Western market rules.

During the 1980s, in addition to trade exchange and financial relations, ties between socialist and capitalist enterprises ‘evolved to more complex and long-term interorganizational relationships involving collaborative research and development, joint ventures, product licensing and the joint production of goods’.Footnote 86 Accordingly, the ICC Liaison Committee created new working parties that focused on joint ventures with the Soviet Union, management training and know-how transfers and new forms of industrial cooperation as well as environmental policies.Footnote 87 In 1988, a Task Force on privatisation was created to inform southern countries about the technical requirements of privatisation and particularly their financing.Footnote 88 After 1989, this Task Force also worked with political and economic actors from the former socialist countries.Footnote 89 In these new fields (for example, the environment), the ICC continued its collaboration with UNECE, in particular after the appointment of Klaus Aksel Sahlgren as General Secretary. Sahlgren had been Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). In that capacity, he had been in regular, and at times confrontational, contact with the ICC about the UN’s plan to draft a code of conduct on multinationals. No sooner had he been appointed Secretary General of the UNECE than he urged the ICC to strengthen collaboration and the division of tasks between the two institutions:

Clearly, the role of the ECE is not to engage in business activities, nor to be directly involved in the implementation of industrial or commercial operations. Rather, I see our role as involving the identification of potential projects of mutual interest in the East/West framework, the definition of operational needs and requirements, and a catalytic action to bring these projects to the stage where they can be implemented by representatives of the private and/or public sectors of member countries.Footnote 90

Four years later, his successor, Gerald Hinteregger, praised ‘the excellent ECE/ICC relationship’, showing that this collaboration was thriving.Footnote 91 When the Liaison Committee met on 14 December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the recent events in Eastern Europe were the first point on the agenda. The Eastern representatives briefly described the situation in their country, recognising the failure of the socialist experiment: ‘Eastern European countries understood that they have to participate in world trade, follow markets, encourage investments, liberalise imports and specialise’, said one of them.Footnote 92 The fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the socialist economies of Eastern Europe marked a very important moment for the ICC. In December 1991, ICC Business World, the monthly magazine of the ICC, published a front-page photo of a giant statue of Lenin being torn down with the following headline: ‘What comes after him?’ In the editorial, Jean-Claude Rouher, secretary general of the ICC, who had just returned from Moscow, emphasised that the ICC would be ‘helping the new countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to enter the mainstream of the world economy’.Footnote 93

A few months later, the ICC presidency disbanded the East–West Committee and established a smaller Advisory Group on Economies in Transition. This decision was driven by two factors. First, with their governments’ abandonment of socialism, Eastern European institutions – primarily chambers of commerce – were able to become direct members of the ICC and were thus eligible to participate in the work of any commission. By May 1992, the ICC already counted sixty-six direct members from the region.Footnote 94 By the end of the decade, several countries, including Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, had established national ICC committees. Second, numerous international organisations became actively involved in the transition of Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries to market economies. Simultaneously, major international business associations significantly increased their engagement in the region after 1989. For instance, due to the OECD’s growing interest in Eastern Europe, the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) designated the region as a priority and expanded its budget in 1991 to support its activities there.Footnote 95 As a result, the ICC estimated that maintaining a committee composed predominantly of Eastern and Western European representatives was less necessary than in previous decades.

But the dissolution of the East–West Committee did not imply a withdrawal of ICC involvement in Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy. In this sense, the ICC stands out from the International Vienna Council (IVC), an ‘East–West business leaders’ club’ created in 1974 and officially devoted to facilitating direct personal connections between businessmen and economic elites on both sides of the Berlin Wall. The dissolution of the Eastern Bloc posed a fundamental challenge to the existence of the IVC. Its members attempted to reinvent the club and redefine its objectives, but their efforts were unsuccessful. As a result, it was formally dissolved in 1996.Footnote 96 In strong contrast, the ICC continued its activities in Eastern Europe through different mechanisms. Eastern European members now directly participated in the work of the ICC’s technical committees, with some commissions creating or retaining East–West working groups, for instance the East/West Working Party on Sea Transport.Footnote 97 Through meetings, seminars, workshops and conferences attended by Eastern European representatives, the ICC played a role in disseminating market principles, promoting neoliberal policies and advancing the privatisation process in the region.

Conclusion

The history of the ICC’s Liaison Committee illustrates the decisive contribution that business actors made, alongside and in synergy with other individual or collective actors, to building a pan-European space during the Cold War and allows us to further highlight certain characteristics of the period.

First, not all countries were equally involved in the creation of this pan-European space. The two major powers – the Soviet Union and the United States – were less dependent on these economic relations and less active in the Liaison Committee’s discussions, as was also the case in the UNECE. The socialist Eastern European countries, especially Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, but also Romania and Yugoslavia, the latter being a central actor in the UNECE, were dependent on trade with the West for their technological advancement. As for the Western European countries, all except for the dictatorships of southern Europe had varying degrees of economic and political interest in developing their relations with Eastern European countries. As the article has shown, West German actors played a major role within the Committee. From the 1970s onwards, the policy of ‘rapprochement’ with the East (Ostpolitik) was promoted by West German governments with the more or less explicit aim of achieving German unification. On its side, part of West German business saw the loss of its long-standing relations with their Central European partners as a threat to its own and West German prosperity. From the 1950s onwards, they lobbied their government to rebuild economic relations with Central and Eastern Europe. Even if they were not alone, these German stakeholders played a central role in the reconstruction of this pan-European space.

Second, in this context, the existence of the Liaison Committee should be replaced in the longer history of economic relations between the two parts of Europe. Since the nineteenth century, Central and Eastern Europe has gradually become the underdeveloped periphery of Western Europe. During the inter-war period, the new Central European nations were regarded as backward and, in the words of Gunar Myrdal, were placed in a ‘semi-colonial state’ in relation to those of Western Europe.Footnote 98 Their economies were largely dominated by the economic interests of Western, and especially German, capitalism. Socialism promised an endogenous development, which was also part of a longer history of economic nationalism in Central–Eastern Europe.Footnote 99 This promise was partially kept during the first post-war decade, but our contribution shows that the pan-European economic space during the Cold War encouraged by these same countries also became the instrument for the penetration of Western European economic interests and the perpetuation of the domination of Western capitalism over its first – Central European – periphery.

Third, throughout this period, the economic actors represented in the ICC, and then more specifically in the Liaison Committee, worked closely with the governments of their respective countries in both parts of Europe. Whereas in the 1950s, under the influence of the superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union – politics took precedence over economics, it seems that economic needs and interests largely influenced political decisions in the subsequent decades. This change began in the mid-1960s, when the economic strategy (and hence the construction of socialism) in Eastern Europe became closely linked to productivity gains and to the import of technology from Western European countries. For the latter, business actors increasingly saw the countries of Eastern Europe as possible economic partners and were encouraged by their respective governments to develop their relations. The ICC, together with other business organisations, played a role in bringing about these economic exchanges, leading to a myriad of economic agreements during the 1970s.Footnote 100 This close collaboration between political and economic actors was a prerequisite and a feature of the realisation of this pan-European economic space, which symbolically culminated in the Helsinki agreements of 1975, whose second chapter (or basket) concerned cooperation in the economic and technological fields. Interestingly, this cooperation was achieved through technical work carried out in committees that seemed to be far removed from the political arena. In this respect, the work of the Liaison Committee is very similar to that of the UNECE, with which it also had close links. Nevertheless, this technical work had important political implications. Western governments saw the exchanges made possible by this technical work as a means of undermining socialist regimes. And the Liaison Committee might come as an example of the gradual penetration of the economic models and interests of capitalist countries, which eventually became a major factor in the downfall of the socialist regimes.

Acknowledgments

This paper was first presented at the ‘Pan-European Economic Spaces in the Cold War’ conference, Geneva, 9–11 June 2022. We want to thank all the participants for helpful comments. The conference was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Centre for Business History in Scotland, the University of Geneva, the Global Studies Institute and the University of Lausanne. We also address our recognition to the three anonymous reviewers at CEH for their helpful feedback. For opening their archives to us, we also express our gratitude to the ICC national committees, the Hungarian chamber of commerce, as well as splendid research conditions in Berlin, Koblenz and Stockholm. Finally, we would like to thank Guillaume Beausire, Michael Hutter, Anna Herczeg-Brayer, Ondrej Fiser and Hannah Tyler who provided us with important information from the Hungarian, German, and Czech archives.

Footnotes

*

The article has been updated since original publication. A notice detailing the change has also been published

References

1 ‘No Business in Moscow’, 1 Mar. 1952, The Economist, 507–8. On this conference, see Mikhail Lipkin, ‘The Moscow Economic Conference of April 1952: Tactical Change or a New Line of Stalin’s Foreign Policy?’, Relations internationales 147, no. 3 (2011): 19–33.

2 See also ‘East–West Trade’, report by the Committee on Trade Barriers of the United States Council, 20 Mar. 1952, Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Internationalla Handelskammarens Svenska National kommittesarkiv, F1 EA52, 4. On the US Council of the ICC, see Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl, Crusading for Globalization, US Multinationals and Their Opponents since 1945 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).

3 It was first called ‘Exploratory Meeting between the chambers of commerce of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and the BICC Working Party ECS/ATA Carnets’, Institut für Zeigeschichte (thereafter IFZ), Munich, Internationale Handelskammer (IHK), 708/1 1488. In the 1980s, it was then renamed ‘Committee of the ICC and the Chambers of Commerce of Socialist Countries for the Development of East/West Trade and Economic Cooperation’.

4 Among others see Vincent Lagendijk, ‘The Structure of Powers: The UNECE and East–West Electricity Connections, 1947–1975’, Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung 24, no. 1 (2014): 50–65; Michel Kostecki, East–West Trade and the GATT System (London: Palgrave, 1979); Sandrine Kott, A World More Equal: An Internationalist Perspective on the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2024); Angela Romano, ‘Untying Cold War Knots: The EEC and Eastern Europe in the Long 1970s’, Cold War History 14, no. 2 (2014): 153–73; Dagmara Jajesniak-Quast and Uwe Müller, eds., ‘Comecon Revisited: Integration in the Eastern Bloc and Entanglements with the Global Economy’, Comparativ 5/6 (2017); Simon Godard, Le laboratoire de internationalisme. Le CAEM et la construction du bloc socialiste (Paris: Presses de sciences po, 2021); Daniel Stinsky, International Cooperation in Cold War Europe: The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1947–64 (London: Bloomsbury, 2022).

5 Angela Romano and Federico Romero, eds., European Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement with the West: National Strategies in the Long 1970s (London: Routledge, 2020).

6 Valentina Fava and Luminita Gatejel, ‘East–West Cooperation in the Automobile Industry. Enterprises, Mobility, Production’, Journal of the Transport History 38 (2017): 11–19.

7 Philip Scranton, ‘Managing Communist Enterprises’, Enterprise & Society 19, no. 3 (2018): 492–537; Philip Scranton, Business Practice in Socialist Hungary. Volume 1: Creating the Theft Economy, 1945–1957 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022); Philip Scranton, Business Practice in Socialist Hungary. Volume 2: From Chaos to Contradiction, 1957–1972 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023).

8 See Angela Romano and Valeria Zanier, ‘Circumventing the Cold War: The Parallel Diplomacy of Economic and Cultural Exchanges between Western Europe and Socialist China in the 1950s and 1960s’, Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 1 (2017): 1–16; Valeria Zanier, ‘Forging New Meanings of Europe: The Cross-Ideological Logic of Western European Business Interest Associations (BIAs) Promoting Trade with Mao’s China in the 1950s’, Business History 66, no. 6 (2024): 1581–602.

9 The introduction of this special issue situates our argumentation within the new Cold War historiography. Based on the various contributions, the same introduction discusses more broadly how this pan-European space takes shape, how it unfolds and what its characteristics are. Earlier inspirations for the concept can be found in Angela Romano, ‘Pan-Europe: A Continental Space of Cooperation(s)’, in European Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement, ed. Angela Romano and Frederico Romero (London: Routledge, 2020), 31–49; and Kott, A World More Equal, 99–128.

10 Ivan Berend, Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

11 We do not engage with the question of the role of the EC in the history of this pan-European economic space. See the contribution by Angela Romano in this special issue.

12 For the private economic diplomacy of the ICC, see Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger, ‘Business and Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: A Corporatist View’, Diplomatica 2, no. 1 (2020): 48–56. On the relationship between China and the ICC, see Lin Yi-Tang, Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger, ‘“In the Interest of Your Bank and Our Country”: Two Encounters between China and the International Chamber of Commerce’, Modern Asian Studies 57, no. 4 (2023): 1387–414. On ICC as a place of transnational exchange for elites, see Philipp Müller, ‘Coordonner le capitalisme européen. Les délégués français et allemands de la Chambre de commerce internationale des années 1930’, in Les espaces d’interaction des élites françaises et allemandes. 1920–1950, ed. Philipp Müller and Hervé Joly (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2021), 111–25. For a more general reflection on business associations in the international arena, see Pierre Eichenberger, Neil Rollings and Janick Schaufelbuehl, ‘The Brokers of Globalization: Towards a History of Business Associations in the International Arena’, Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 217–34.

13 Kott, A World More Equal, 112–28; Angela Romano. From Détente in Europe to European Détente: How the West Shaped the Helsinki CSCE (Bruxelles: P.I.E., 2009).

14 George L. Ridgeway, Merchants of Peace: The History of the International Chamber of Commerce (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959). For a recent overview of the state of the art on the ICC, see Thomas David and Pierre Eichenberger, ‘“A World Parliament of Business”? The International Chamber of Commerce and Its Presidents in the Twentieth Century’, Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 260–83.

15 Dominic Kelly, ‘The International Chamber of Commerce’, New Political Economy 10 (2005): 259–61; Karsten Ronit, Global Business Associations (New York: Routledge, 2018); Marieke Louis, Les diplomates du capitalisme. Socio-histoire des relations entre la Chambre de commerce internationale, l’Organisation internationale des employeurs et les organisations internationales (XXe–XXIe siècles) (Paris: Habilitation à diriger des recherches, 2025).

16 Claire Lemercier and Jérôme Sgard, ‘Une justice privée? L’arbitrage et la construction d’un espace marchand international (1920–1960)’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 1 (2024): 34–49; Guillaume Beausire, ‘La neutralité comme capital. Les ressorts symboliques de la compétitivité suisse sur le marché de l’arbitrage privé international (1970–1980)’, Critique internationale 97, no. 4 (2022): 23–44; Jakob Zollmann, ‘Un juge Berlinois à Paris entre droit public international et arbitrage commercial. Robert Marx, les Tribunaux arbitraux mixtes et la Chambre de Commerce International’, in Les espaces d’interaction des élites françaises et allemandes. 1920–1950, ed. Philipp Müller and Hervé Joly (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2021), 63–77; Emmanuel Jolivet, Les Incoterms – Etude d’une norme du commerce international (Paris: Litec, 2003).

17 Ridgeway, Merchants of Peace, 261 ff. See also Madeleine Lynch Dungy, Order and Rivalry: Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 223–58.

18 Thomas David and Guilherme Sampaio, ‘The Alternative Bretton Woods: The 1944 International Business Conference in Rye and the Postwar International Economic Order’, EUI, Florence, HEC Working Paper 2024/01, 3.

19 Confidential report of Pierre Vasseur, secretary of the ICC, to Waren Lee Pierson, president of the ICC, 20 July 1956. ‘Chamber of commerce of the Soviet Union’, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 9, 2.

20 Confidential letter from the secretary of the ICC Pierre Vasseur to the president of the ICC, Camille Gut, 25 Feb. 1954, Archivio Privato Alberto Pirelli, Milan, Box 55.

21 Robert Mark Spaulding Jr, Osthandel and Ospolitik. German Foreign Trade Policies in Eastern Europe from Bismarck to Adenauer (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1997).

22 Otto Wolf von Amerongen, Der Weg nach Osten: vierzig Jahre Brückenbau für die deutsche Wirtschaft (München: Droemer Knaur, 1992), 59.

23 Karl Heinz Schlarp, ‘Das Dilemma des westdeutschen Osthandels und die Entstehung des Ost-Auschusses der deutschen Wirtschaft 1950–1952’, Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 41 (1993): 223–76; Sven Jüngerkes, Diplomaten der Wirtschaft: die Geschichte des Ost-Ausschusses der Deutschen Wirtschaft (Osnabrück: Fibre, 2012).

24 Angela Romano, ‘Pan-Europe: A Continental Space of Cooperation(s)’, in European Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement, ed. Angela Romano and Frederico Romero (London: Routledge, 2020), 32–33; Odd Arne Westad, ‘Beginnings of the End: How the Cold War Crumbled’, in Reinterpreting the end of the Cold War. Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, ed. Silvio Pons and Frederico Romero (London; New York: Frank Cass, 2005), 69-70.

25 Minutes of German ICC National Committee, Niederschrift über die Präsidialsitzung am 18. September in Frankfurt a. M, 18 Sept. 1956, IFZ, Nachlass Riedberg, ED 347/37, 4.

26 Ibid., 7.

27 On Abs’s role during the Nazi regime and his subsequent positions (especially on the issue of international investment protection), see Taylor St. John, The Rise of Investor–State Arbitration: Politics, Law, and Unintended Consequences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 74; Nicolás M. Perrone, Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination: How Foreign Investors Play by Their Own Rules (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 52; Werner Plumpe, Alexander Nützenadel and Catherine Schenk, Deutsche Bank: The Global Hausbank, 1870–2020 (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 350–420.

28 Report, Abr. Frowein, Wuppertal-Elberfeld, 30 Oct. 1946, IFZ, Nachlass Riedberg, ED 347/17, 4–5. Contemporary correspondence documenting the disagreements between Reichswirtschaftsminister Walther Funk and Frowein can be found in the same box.

29 Minutes of German ICC National Committee, Niederschrift über die Präsidialsitzung am 18. September in Frankfurt a. M, 18 Sept. 1956, IFZ, Nachlass Riedberg, ED 347/37, 6.

30 BICC board meeting, Bureau International des Chambres de Commerce, Comité de Direction. Contacts éventuels entre le BICC et les chambres de commerce de Tchécoslovaquie et de Hongrie, 30 Jan. 1964, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1488.

31 Memo of C. Pseminos to ICC Secretary General on possible contacts between the IBCC and the Chambers of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, 13 Dec. 1963, Foundation for Economic History Research within Banking and Enterprise (Wallenberg Archives), Stockholm, SEB F1C 1326, 1.

32 Stinsky, International Cooperation, 39.

33 United Nations Archives, Geneva (UNOG-A) UNECE, GX 18/12/1/ 59 – 18/12/1/71, Box 2448; GX 10-2-2-19. Boxes 1922 and 1923.

34 Claire Lemercier and Jérôme Sgard, Arbitrage privé international et globalisation(s) (Mission de Recherche Droit et Justice: Sciences Po. 2015), 133 and f.; Stinsky, International Cooperation, 236.

35 See for example, Commission économique pour l’Europe. Comité pour le développement du commerce. Groupe de travail spécial de l’arbitrage. Rapport du groupe de travail sur sa cinquième session, 23 Oct. 1958, Archives de Paris, Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Paris, 2ETP/1/7/30, 6. See also Sitzung des Arbeitsausschusses für internationale Handelsschiedsgerichtsbarkeit der Deutschen Gruppe der IHK, 3 Dec. 1958, IFZ, IHK 708/1_1342, 1.

36 Commission on international arbitration, East–West Arbitration, 6 Mar. 1961, Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Internationalla Handelskammarens Svenska National kommittesarkiv, F1 EA 42, 1.

37 Besnik Pula, Globalization under and after Socialism: The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 60.

38 See the itinerary of the visit in the Archives of the Chamber of Commerce of Hungary, Budapest, Documents on the United States.

39 British National Committee of the ICC, Meeting of the Executive Committee, 15 Dec. 1966, Clive Latham Baillieu Papers (University of Melbourne Archives), UDC20220001-102, 9.

40 BICC board meeting, Bureau International des Chambres de Commerce, Comité de Direction. Contacts éventuels entre le BICC et les chambres de commerce de Tchécoslovaquie et de Hongrie, 30 Jan. 1964, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1488.

41 ICC Council, 105th Session, 7 Feb. 1965, Foundation for Economic History Research within Banking and Enterprise (Wallenberg Archives), SEB F1C 1338 1965, 7.

42 ICC Council, 103rd Session, 26 May l964, Foundation for Economic History Research within Banking and Enterprise (Wallenberg Archives), SEB F1C 1338 1965, 12.

43 Fifth International Seminar International Trade Relations. (Ströbl, 17/27 March 1972). The ICC’s Role in Improving International Trade Relations. Statement by Mr Jean Royer, ICC Consultant on International Trade Policy, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1493, 2.

44 On this, see the minutes of the Liaison Committee in IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1488, and 708/1 1489.

45 Willis C. Armstrong Oral History Interview, 12 June 1973, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, accessed 10 July 2024, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral-histories/armstron.

46 See IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1492.

47 Fifth International Seminar International Trade Relations. (Ströbl, 17/27 March 1972). The ICC’s Role in Improving International Trade Relations. Statement by Mr Jean Royer, ICC Consultant on International Trade Policy, IFZ, IHK 708/1 1493.

48 ‘Improving the system of temporary admission’, ICC News, Sept. 1960.

49 Report, Internationale Handelskammer, Deutsche Landesgruppe, Sondierungsgespräche mit den Vertretern Osteuropäischer Staatshandelskammern. Bericht über die Sitzung von Mittwoch, dem 12. November 1969 in Paris, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1489, 5.

50 ICC Liaison Committee minutes, 18 Nov. 1976, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1497, 7.

51 ICC Liaison Committee minutes, Summary record, 23 Nov. 1971, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1492, 12. See also Sigvard Jarvin, L’arbitrage commercial dans les relations Est-Ouest. L’expérience de la Cour d’arbitrage de la CCI quant au droit applicable, au nombre d’arbitres et au lieu de l’arbitrage, Droit et pratique du commerce international, Supplément au Tome 11 (n° 2) (Paris: Masson, 1985).

52 Report, Internationale Handelskammer, Deutsche Landesgruppe, Vermerk Betr. Sitzung des BICC am 22 Sept. 1967 in Paris, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1488, 4.

53 Stephan Barisitz, Banking in Central and Eastern Europe 1980–2006 (London: Routledge), 8.

54 Ad-hoc Arbeitsgruppe Praktische Schwierigkeiten im Ost-West-Handel Bericht über die Sitzung vom Mittwoch, den 1. März 1972, Paris, IFZ, IHK, ED 708/ 1 1492, 4–5.

55 On UNECE’s initiative, see the article of Angela Romano in this special issue.

56 Meeting between an ICC delegation and the chambers of commerce of the socialists countries, 12 Nov. 1969, IFZ, IHK 708/1 1489, 5.

57 ICC Liaison Committee with the Chamber of Commerce of Socialist Countries. Ad hoc Working Party on Practical ways of facilitating East–West Trade, 29 Oct. 1973, IFZ, IHK, ED 708 1, 1492, 2.

58 Report by the secretary general of the ICC, The Future of East–West Trade within the ICC, 28 Feb. 1978, IFZ, IHK, ED 708 1, 1497, 16.

59 Fifth International Seminar International Trade Relations. (Ströbl, 17/27 March 1972). The ICC’s Role in Improving International Trade Relations. Statement by Mr Jean Royer, ICC Consultant on International Trade Policy, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1493, 2.

60 ICC Liaison Committee with the Chamber of Commerce of Socialist Countries, 23 Nov. 1971, IFZ, IHK, ED 708 1, 1492, 7.

61 Minutes of a meeting on East–West trade among German committee members of the Comité Européen pour le Progrès Economique et Sociale (CEPES), Ergebnisniederschrift, 14. May 1971, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1490, 1.

62 Schröder to Psiménos, 28 Mar. 1974, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1496, 1.

63 Report, Gen. Gaydaenko, and Gespräch mit dem Generalsekretär der HIK der UdSSR, Gen. Gaidaenko (sic) (both undated, probably Feb. 1975), Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 277.

64 Report, Verbindungsausschuss der Internationalen Handelskammer mit den Osteuropäischen Staatshandelskammern, Bericht über die Sitzung vom Donnerstag, 21 Jan. 1971, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1490, 1.

65 Biographical data on Hungarian Participants, Budapest, 11–13 Oct. 1972, Archives of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Business International Hungarian Roundtable 1.

66 ICC Liaison Committee with the Chamber of Commerce of Socialist Countries, 26 May 1972, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1492, 12. On the importance of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, see Pal Germuska, East–West Bridge-Builders? Hungarian Elites and the European Integration, 31 pages, PanEur1970s workshop, Florence, 2017, accessed 11 Mar. 2025, https://iow.eui.eu/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2017/11/Germuska_Hungary_PanEur1970s-workshop-paper-2017-11.pdf.

67 Schröder to Kallós, 14 Oct. 1975, IFZ, IHK, ED 708/1 1494. This cooperation had developed in other circles: in 1972, Kallós took part in discussions between the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and the Ost-Ausschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft, whose chairman was Hans Rudolph Freiherr von Schröder, to strengthen economic relations between the two countries: see for instance, Kallós to Otto Wolf von Amerongen, 19 May 1972, Archives of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Otto Wolff von Amerongen.

68 Rudolphe Karsten, Wirtschaftsdiplomatie im Kalten Krieg: Die Ostpolitik der westdeutschen Grossindustrie 1945–1991 (Frankfurt/Main: Campus-Verlag, 2004).

69 Special Meeting of the ICC Liaison Committee with the Chambers of Commerce of the Socialist Countries, 4 Dec. 1978, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1499, 2. See also their common article in Le Monde Diplomatique on the Liaison Committee, entitled ‘La Chambre de commerce internationale et les échanges Est-Ouest’, June 1977, 9.

70 Kurzinformation über die Internationale Handelskammer in Paris, Kammer für Anssenhandel der DDR, Büro des Präsidentent, (undated, probably Dec. 1974), Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 277.

71 U.S. Council 1983 Work Program, Hagley Museum, Wilmington, Philip D. Reed papers, Box 24 Folder 5, 13.

72 See the remarks by Kallós to other Eastern European delegates, ‘Vorberatung der Delegationen der Handelskammern der ML/RGV’, 3 Dec. 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 402, 1.

73 This interest did not concern only Western countries. In 1979, the Indian ICC Committee requested that ‘developing countries should also be included’ in the ICC Liaison Committee. See Council of the ICC, 135th Session, 21 June 1979, Paris, Summary of Decisions, Hagley Museum, Wilmington, Philip D. Reed papers, Box 23A Folder 2, 4.

74 Kammer für Aussenhandel, Direktive, 17 May 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 402.

75 Report, Kammer für Aussenhandel der DDR, Bericht, 4 June 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/402.

76 Minutes ICC Liaison Committee, 27 May 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/402, 1–2.

77 Vorberatung der Delegationen der Handelskammern der ML/RGV, 3 Dec. 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 402.

78 Vorberatung der Delegationen der Handelskammern der ML/RGV, 3 Dec. 1982, Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 402, 2–3.

79 Pula, Globalization, 80–82.

80 Julian Germann, Unwitting Architect: German Primacy and the Origins of Neoliberalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021), 3–5.

81 Ivan T. Berend, From the Soviet Bloc to the European Union: The Economic and Social Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe since 1973 (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 2009), chap. 1; Pula, Globalization.

82 Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol, ‘Banking on Détente: Barclays, Paribas, and Société Générale in Poland, 1950s–1980s’, Business History 65, no. 4 (2023): 699–718; Fritz Bartel, The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2022), chap. 7.

83 See for instance the first discourse of Tierbach as co-chairman of the Committee in 1982. He spoke at length about the financial crisis. See Bundesarchiv, DL 200/ 402, ‘Introductory Remarks of Mr H.-O. Thierbach’, 6 Dec. 1982. The issue of indebtedness was also addressed during discussions on the financing of East–West trade (Committee of the ICC and the Chambers of Commerce of Socialist Countries for the Development of East/West Trade and Economic Cooperation, 1st June 1984, Archiv für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter AfZ), Zürich, 480.1.4.8.2., 2).

84 Liaison Committee, Note for the guidance of Mr von Schröder, 30 Nov. 1971, IFZ, IHK, ED 708/1 1492, 1.

85 Committee of the ICC and the Chambers of Commerce of Socialist Countries for the Development of East/West Trade and Economic Cooperation, 10–11 May 1983, AfZ, 480.1.4.8.2, 2; see also ‘Working Party Banking Technique and Practice of the East West Committee of the ICC’, 23 Oct. 1989, AfZ, 480.1.4.8.3.

86 Pula, Globalization, 82.

87 Minutes of the Liaison Committee 19 May 1988, AfZ, Zürich, 480.1.4.8.3. On ICC’s involvement in global environment governance in the 1980s, see Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Thomas David, ‘Beyond Planetary Limits! The International Chamber of Commerce, the United Nations, and the Invention of Sustainable Development’, Business History Review 97, no. 3 (2023): 481–511.

88 Executive Board – 56th Session Tuesday, 29 Nov. 1988, IFZ, IHK, 708/1 1588.

89 Minutes of the East/West Committee (Meeting on 7 May 1991), AfZ, 480.1.4.8.3, 6.

90 Comité de la CCI et des chambres de commerce des pays socialistes pour le développement du commerce et de la coopération économique Est/Ouest, 20 Dec. 1983, AfZ, 480.1.4.8.2, 3.

91 Committee of the ICC and the Chambers of Commerce of Socialist Countries for the Development of East/West Trade and Economic Cooperation, 16 May 1988, AfZ, 480.1.4.8.3, 3.

92 Draft Executive Summary of the East/West Committee (Meeting on 14 Dec. 1989), AfZ, 480.1.4.8.3, 2.

93 Jean-Charles Rouher, ‘Commentary’, Business World: Monthly Review of the International Chamber of Commerce 2, no. 1 (1992): 2.

94 ‘Winds of Change in the East’, Business World: Monthly Review of the International Chamber of Commerce 2, no. 5 (1992): 3.

95 Meeting of the BIAC Bureau, Paris, 8 Apr. 1991, 2, and Letter of Maldwyn Thomas, Executive Director of the Canadian Secretariat ICC/BIAC to Thomas J. Bata, 20 Mar. 1991. Bata Shoe Company, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Box 12, TJB.880.

96 On the International Vienna Council, see the contribution of Yohann Morival in this special issue.

97 For arbitration, see Emmanuel Jolivet and Galina Zukova, ‘The History of the ICC Central and Eastern European Institutional Arbitration Group’, Arbitration.ru No. 1/5 (2019): 20-24, https://journal.arbitration.ru/reviews/the-history-of-the-icc-central-and-eastern-european-institutional-arbitration-group/ (20 March 2025). For the committee see East/West Working Party on Sea Transport, 22 Oct. 1990, AfZ, 480.1.4.8.3.

98 UNOG-A ECE ARR 14/1360/80, Myrdal 1948.

99 Thomas David, Nationalisme économique et industrialisation: l’expérience des pays d’Europe de l’Est, 1789–1939 (Genève: Droz, 2009).

100 See the other articles in this special issue.