The material constituting the "Travers Archive" originated as part of the OEEC records accumulated by Mr. H. Travers, a staff member of the of the OEEC Secretariat assigned to the EPU activity.;Travers started as an Administrator with the Payments Division (subsequently made Head of this unit) of the Trade and Payments Department. The EPU activity fell under the responsibility of the Payments Division and was set up to provide an automatic mechanism for the settlement of net surpluses and deficits of OEEC Member countries by gold payments and credit, granted through a central agency. The BIS (Bank of International Settlements) in Basle, acted as agent for the OEEC in respect of the EPU operations, expressing Member countries credits and deficits with each other in a single credit or deficit balance with the EPU each month. As a key component of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, the EPU was both an instrument of Europe's economic recovery and integration, and an important factor in its transition from bilateralism to currency convertibility.;The EPU provided the basis which enabled all the western European currencies to be transferable into one another, thereby enhancing the OEEC's efforts in liberalising intra-European trade from quantitative restrictions and discriminatory regulations.;The successor to this initiative - the EMA - was signed in 1955 and came into force in 1959. The Agreement provided a framework for monetary co-operation in Europe during the period of transition to full convertibility of currencies. Short to medium term credits were made available to Member countries to help them overcome temporary balance of payments difficulties. Additionally, the EMA acted as a multilateral mechanism for an exchange guarantee on central banks holdings of member country currencies. (Those documents referring to the EPU and have been placed in the EPU/EMA fonds).
The records consisted of the following categories:
- coded documents issued by Joint Trade & payments Committee, Council, Executive Committee, and multiple working parties,
- OEEC internal memoranda and exchanges of letters with Delegations.

The first file of Traver's Archives (reference OEEC 269) includes the explanation of the arrangemnt, as he pass the files the the OEEC.

English, French

We have digital copies only of selected OEEC documents

See also CEEC fonds and the EPU/EMA fonds, as all the documents kept by Mr. Travers on the EPU have been put together with the EMA documents to form this fonds.