Hotz Linder Agreement

The Hotz-Linder Agreement of July 1951 was an informal and not written-down agreement between Switzerland and the USA concerning Swiss trade with the Eastern Bloc . It is named after the two negotiators Harold Linder (USA) and Jean Hotz .

At the end of 1948, the United States urged neutral Switzerland to act in the interests of the Western powers and to restrict deliveries of "war-essential" goods to the Soviet Union . In particular, Switzerland had to support the provisions of the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) . The CoCom consisted of all NATO states (except Iceland) and Japan, which is why Switzerland's de facto membership was very questionable in terms of neutrality policy.

Strict export controls led to a freeze on the export of so-called List II products to normal, average trade, while List I products could not be delivered to the Eastern Bloc, or only to a limited extent.

Because Swiss industry feared American countermeasures, it decided not to exhaust the negotiated limits, although the original quota for List I goods was increased from 8 to 35 million francs. The CoCom was not abolished until 1994.

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• Eric Flury-Dasen: Hotz-Linder-Agreement. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• André Schaller: Swiss neutrality in east-west trade: The Hotz-Linder Agreement of July 23, 1951. Haupt, Bern / Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-258-03898-8 (also political science dissertation, University of St. Gallen 1987) .