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3. The Report contains only one sentence referring
directly to Hong Kong. In the section on 'The Wider Community and the Third Countries' it is briefly stated
that 'a special problem arises with respect to imports
from Hong Kong' The context is no real help in detect-
ing just what the Commission are getting at, but it would
be prudent to assume that they mean a problem for the
Community' and not 'a problem for Hong Kong'.
4. The Report recommends that a strict parallelism must
be observed in the progress by new members towards indust-
rial free trade and the agricultural common market and goes on to say that 'the best way of maintaining a certain degree of unity of the internal market in the wider
Community would be for the starting date, the duration and
rhythm of development of the transitional period to be the
same for all the acceding countries and for as few systems
It does not, as possible to be exceptions to this'.
therefore, look as if the Commission will be favourably
disposed towards the revival of the concept of 'soft
decalage'
5. The section on the abolition of impediments to intra-
Community trade contains the following passages:-
'The elimination of impediments to trade, even
when done progressively, could lead to certain
difficulties in 'sensitive sectors' which were
dealt with separately under the Kennedy
negotiations
•
The very wide divergences
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