Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Page 49
THE OSLO CONVENTION AND AFTER
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general depression reached its low-water mark in the course of
1932 and 1933. Under these conditions the demand for govern-
mental assistance to home production and labour grew ever more
insistent, and all nations sought for still more effective means
than the customs tariff to fight foreign competition. Even before
the Oslo Convention had definitively come into force, members
of the Oslo Group with most other nations were carried along
by this movement. By a royal decree of June 3oth, 1931, a system
of licensing and import quotas was put into practice in Belgium.
In the Netherlands an emergency law concerning importations
was adopted on November 23th of the same year, and for cer-
tain articles quotas were introduced as from the beginning of
1932. In Denmark, a law of January 3oth, 1932, gave the offi-
cial authorities a very effective controlling influence over the
importation of foreign goods by establishing a rigid exchange
control. Finland, Norway and Sweden did not embark upon the
same road at that early date and never carried the restrictions
so far, even if Norway, and to a lesser extent the other two coun-
tries, gradually imposed restrictions of various kinds on the im-
portation of certain articles.
Evidently, all such measures tended to make the aims of the
Oslo Convention more or less unattainable, and at the same time
another event, also resulting from the economic crisis, inflicted
a great loss on the Oslo policies: i. e. that England went off the
gold standard in the autumn of 1931. In fact, the restrictive mea-
sures in their commerce adopted by Belgium and the Nether-
lands were essentially a feature of their fight to defend their gold
standard. On the other hand, all the Northern Countries followed
the course of England and thus entered the sterling block, separat-
ing themselves from the gold block of which the Low Countries
remained members for five years. This division of the Oslo Group
was a serious impediment to their co-operation in matters of
commercial policy.
Now, the signatories of the Oslo Convention never conceived
this act as the final expression of the policies they had in view.
On the contrary, in a special protocol signed simultaneously with
the convention they proclaimed their intention to continue their
common efforts to diminish all obstacles to international com-
merce as well as to consider the possibilities of extending the
application of the principles on which the convention was
founded.