Dependent Agents as Permanent Establishments

S. 2I. Introduction

An Englishman and a German are sitting in a room in the Château de la Muette in Paris in 1956. They are OEEC Working Party 1 (Working Party 1), charged with drafting the definition of “permanent establishment”. They would have known each other through membership in the Fiscal Committee, and certainly the German had been involved in the negotiations for a treaty between those two countries only two years earlier. The strange thing is that they are not talking to each other, and, nor it seems, did they ever do so. The problem was not language, as the German spoke English; the treaty negotiations between those two countries had been in English, and the only time an interpreter is mentioned is in the drafting committee. Perhaps they thought it would be quicker if they each were to write their own contribution – which would have been fine but for the fact that they did not seem to have reviewed the other’s contribution either.

This makes a good story, but in the author’s opinion there is an even better explanation: they never met at all! Travel in the post-war years was not as it is today. If an Englishman wished to meet someone in Paris, he would have taken the 10:30 Gold...