Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Western Europe, Volume IV

ECA Telegram Files, FRC Acc. No. 53A278, Paris Toeca: Telegram

The Chief of the ECA Mission in France (Bingham) to the Administrator for Economic Cooperation (Hoffman)

confidential

Paris, October 22, 1949—5 p. m.

Toeca 1295. Counterpart Series No. 65.

1. Following dispatch our Toeca 1280,¹ mission continued to question appropriateness of monthly release of counterpart at end of October in absence of economic program. Schweitzer² informed mission On October 20, after Moch failed to form government and when Mayer–Petsche Cabinet seemed a near certainty, that Queuille and Petsche wished to withdraw request that ECA consider approving release in October. Schweitzer asks that ECA consider this arrangement as regularization of the 30 billion franc temporary advance authorized by Administrator in early August. This request seems reasonable to me. If necessary to avoid any inaccurate and unfortunate political interpretation of no release in October, French could publicly announce that purpose was to provide regularization of advance in August. See Toeca 1120.³

2. According to director of Treasury, the expected flow of French Treasury receipts should be adequate to avoid necessity of recourse to advance account at Bank of France until heavy end-of-month November payments begin. My hope is that an early solution to French political crisis will enable mission to consider before that time the advisability of continued monthly releases within framework of economic and financial program of new French Cabinet. If political crisis continues it may complicate above arrangements. You will be kept advised.

Bingham

1. Not printed; this telegram of October 13 reported on economic complications related to the political crisis following the resignation of Queuille’s cabinet on October 5 in a dispute over wage demands by labor groups. The ECA Mission had informed French officials that it “could no longer recommend monthly release of counterpart for investment expenditures until a new French Government had set out a program for continued progress towards ERP goals.…” Petsche in reply had “stressed that Queuille administration had been violently criticized in certain quarters as ‘doing the bidding of the Americans’ and that, if there is no release in October, it would certainly be publicly interpreted as US dissatisfaction with new cabinet”. (ECA Telegram Files, FRC Acc. No. 53A278, Paris Toeca)
2. Pierre Paul Schweitzer, Secretary General of the French Interministerial Committee for Questions of European Economic Cooperation.
3. Not printed.