The European Free Trade Association

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is an intergovernmental organisation set up for the promotion of free trade and economic integration to the benefit of its four Member States: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

The Association is responsible for the management of: 

• The EFTA Convention, which forms the legal basis of the organisation and governs free trade relations between the EFTA States;
• EFTA’s worldwide network of free trade and partnership agreements;
• The European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement, which enables three of the four EFTA Member States (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) to participate in the EU’s Internal Market.

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was founded in 1960 on the premise of free trade as a means of achieving growth and prosperity amongst its Member States as well as promoting closer economic co-operation between the Western European countries. Furthermore, the EFTA countries wished to contribute to the expansion of trade in the world at large.

Based on these overall goals, EFTA today maintains the management of the EFTA Convention (intra-EFTA trade), the EEA Agreement (EFTA-EU relations), and the EFTA Free Trade Agreements (third country relations). The EFTA Convention and the EFTA free trade agreements are managed from the Geneva office, the EEA Agreement from the Brussels office.

EFTA was founded by the Stockholm Convention in 1960. The immediate aim of the association was to provide a framework for the liberalisation of trade in goods amongst its Member States. At the same time EFTA was established as an economic counterbalance to the more politically driven EEC. Relations with the EEC, later the EC and the EU, have been at the core of EFTA activities from the beginning. In the 1970s the EFTA States concluded free trade agreements with the EC; in 1994 the EEA Agreement entered into force. Since the beginning of the 1990s EFTA has actively pursued trade relations with third countries in and beyond Europe. The first partners were the central and eastern Europe countries, followed by the countries in the Mediterranean area. In recent years the EFTA network of free trade agreements has reached across the Atlantic as well as into Asia.

EFTA was founded by the following seven countries: Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Finland joined in 1961, Iceland in 1970, and Liechtenstein in 1991. In 1973, the UK and Denmark left EFTA to join the EC. They were followed by Portugal in 1986, and by Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. Today the EFTA members are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.