ABSTRACT
During the 61st Conference of the international law association (ILA), held in Paris from August 26th to September 1st, 1984, the ILA Committee on legal aspects of a new international economic order recalled that its original programme had contained monetary and financial problems as matters to be studied within a NIEO context. On the interconnection between trade and finance, which is widely acknowledged, a warning may be sounded against voices clamouring for a formal link between the two and suggesting a kind of reciprocity between continued servicing of developing countries' debts and improved access to the markets of industrial countries. Legally speaking, the development of a custom preater legem is not unproblematic, as it may tend to undermine the authority of the basic rules and serve to thwart effective decision making. The 'implementability' of proposals is an aspect which lawyers should, it is submitted, always accord an important place in their work.
