ABSTRACT
On 1 August 1975, 35 heads of government from all over Europe, as well as from Canada and the US, gathered in Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall for the signing ceremony of the Final Act that concluded the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), after three years of negotiations and three days of solemn speeches.2 The previous day, four of the most prominent participants in the summit had met for a working lunch in the British Embassy during a pause in the conference works: on that occasion, President Gerald Ford of the US, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing of France, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of the Federal Republic of Germany, and Prime Minister Harold Wilson of the United Kingdom had reached a private agreement to convene, later in the year, a restricted meeting aimed at discussing the outstanding economic problems confronting the capitalist world and the international economy.3 Their decision would pave the way to the first “Economic Summit” of the most industrialized countries, which took place five months later, with invitations extended to Japan and Italy, in the French castle of Rambouillet.4
