of Austria and Switzerland. In accordance with this agreement commercial travellers and agents were permitted to import commercial samples from Switzerland into Austria, and conversely, temporarily duty-free under cover of a commercial sample triptyque without the deposit of import duties. The guarantees for the import duties are given by an Austrian insurance company for imports into Austria, and by a Swiss company for the imports into Switzerland. The application of this system was limited to collections of samples on which the customs duties would not exceed 60,000 Austrian schillings or 10,000 Swiss Francs. The period allowed for re-exportation was one year. Thus, based on this convention, this triptyque scheme and allegedly following Charles Aubert's vision and initiative (director of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services of Geneva and future first director of the Chambres de Commerce Suisses), the Customs Co-operation Council with the cooperation of the International League of Commercial Travellers and Agents and of the ICC's International Information Bureau of Chambers of Commerce prepared the Customs Convention Regarding the E.C.S. Carnets for Commercial Samples which entered into force on 3 October 1957. The new Convention introduced the E.C.S. Carnet, a substitution on an optional basis for the usual national temporary importation papers which replaced any deposit or guarantee for suspended import duties and charges if such a guarantee was required by the customs authorities in a particular case. The initials E.C.S. stand for the combined English and French words: Echantillons Commerciaux - Commercial Samples. The first countries to sign this convention were West Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey and the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs acted as the depositary of the convention. The Customs Co-operation Council informed the Executive Secretary of GATT that the "satisfactory results obtained by the use of E.C.S. carnets for the temporary importation of commercial samples (in 1960, 15,600 ECS carnets were issued, for a total value of US$16,320,000) has induced the international trading community to propose that the facilities offered by the ECS Carnet Convention should be extended over the widest possible field." This idea was supported by the International Chamber of Commerce. The ATA Convention A preliminary enquiry on the usefulness of a customs document for temporary duty-free admission, carried out by the Customs Cooperation Council with the assistance of GATT, UNESCO and ICC showed general support for