Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Oecd Institutional Organization

The OECD promotes democracy and local, regional, national, and global market economies and maintains co-operative relations with more than 100 countries and economies, including 70 developing and emerging market economies with which it exchanges views and shares its expertise and accumulated experience. The OECD currently has 30 member counties (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States) and invited five more countries (Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia, and Slovenia) to join in May 2007, and is investigating offering membership to Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. Membership in the OECD is by the invitation of the OECD governing body, the Council. The Centre for Co-operation with Non-Members (CCNM) is responsible for the OECDs relationship with non-members. The CCNMs Global Forums examine trans-boundary issues that impact members and their relationships with non-members.

The Council is comprised of one representative from each member country, plus a representative of the European Commission, and meets per a regular schedule. The OECD Secretariat, who is also charged with accomplishing the Council dictates, chairs the Council. All Council decisions are by consensus. The overall direction of the OECD is set at an annual meeting of the Council attended by member representatives at the ministerial level. The OECD Forum held during the ministerial meeting allows access to OCED ministerial attendees by outside business, labor, and nongovernmental organizations. The OECD is headquartered in Paris, France, and employs a secretariat staff of 2,500, conducting business in French and English, with a 2007 budget of €340 million.

The OECD uses approximately 200 policy-specific committees to review and evaluate all policies and developments pertinent to fulfilling the OECD mission statement. These committees review, evaluate, request, participate in, and contribute to the work of the OECD. Approximately 40,000 senior member state representatives participate in these committees each year and continue their interaction and access to information online through a dedicated and secure OECD internet network. These committees create new rules of governing international co-operation, develop and negotiate formal agreements between countries, develop agreed upon standards, create models, or produce guidelines for all of the topics pertinent to the OECD mission statement.

The signing of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) by 20 countries at the Salon de l'Horloge, Quai d'Orsay, Paris, on December 14,1960. The OECD currently has 30 member countries.

The OECD monitors and analyzes all events that impact the economies of its member states and the global economy making short- and medium-term economic projections for its member states and the global economy. The OECD Secretariat is responsible for the overall collection, analysis, and dissemination of the data. OECD committees review the data and assess possible national and international policy initiatives [Page 767]based on the data. The OECD Council recommends policy initiatives based on the work of the committees, and governments choose whether or not and how to undertake the policy initiatives. The OECDs four decades of collecting, monitoring, and comparing of economic and social data has made its statistical database of trends, forecasts, and analyses in economics, societal evolution and norms, trade, the environment, agriculture, technology, governmental policies, taxation, poverty, and development the largest in the world.

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