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European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
Practical Law UK Glossary 4-107-6558 (Approx. 3 pages)
Glossary
European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
Intergovernmental organisation founded in 1960 to promote free trade and economic integration between its member states. Today, the EFTA member states are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
EFTA has three main tasks:
- Maintaining and developing the EFTA Convention, which regulates economic relations between the four EFTA member states.
- Managing the European Economic Area Agreement (EEA Agreement), which brings together the European Union member states and three of the EFTA states: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in a single economic market, known as the internal market (see EFTA: EEA Agreement).
- Developing EFTA's worldwide network of free trade agreements (see EFTA: Global trade relations).
For further information, see Practice note, Application of EU legislation to EEA EFTA states and the EFTA website.