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not yet reached a decision on what the negotiating objectives
should be for Hong Kong and what was said at the meeting must
be without commitment.
3. We had formally applied to join the Community in May.
More recently the Foreign Secretary had made a full statement
on the British case at the W.E.U. Council meeting in
The Hague on 4 July.
follows:
Paragraph 36 of his speech read as
"During the 1961-63 negotiations between the Community
and Britain it was provisionally agreed that, with one
or two exceptions, Association under Part IV of the
Treaty of Rome would be appropriate for our Dependent
Territories. We trust that you would still agree that
for these Territories this is the best arrangement.
should discuss together the position of any Dependent
Territories for which association is not appropriate.
This covered in one way or another the position of all our
territories, including Hong Kong.
We
11
40 In 1961-63, no provisional agreement had been reached
before the negotiations ended. The Six had rejected the
original British proposal that Hong Kong should be associated
with the enlarged Community under Part IV of the Treaty of Rome.
They did not consider that Association was appropriate for a
Dependent Territory with well developed manufacturing industries.
5. The British proposal on the table at the end of the
negotiations had contained a number of elements. On cotton textiles
British imports from Hong Kong were to be accorded the same
treatment as imports from India, Pakistan and Ceylon; this
would involve the gradual application of the c.e.t. to imports
of these goods from Hong Kong. A remedial procedure would
operate if, as a consequence, exports of cotton goods from
Hong Kong to the enlarged Community fell below agreed base
levels related to the level of recent imports.
Britain's imports
/of
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