قسم
CONFIDENTIAL
PREFERENCES FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Meeting with Mr. Tran of the Commission
of the European Communities
In the early stages of the Trade and Development Board Mr. Tran of
the Commission sought out Mr. Goldsmith and asked whether it would be
possible to have a private meeting to discuss the present Community
position on preferences with special reference to the status of Hong Kong.
Mr. Goldsmith agreed to this and Mr. Tran had no objection to his suggestion
that I should attend as well. He declined the offer to bring other
members of the Commission with him on the grounds that he would be able to
speak more freely alone.
Community's Present Position
2.
The meeting took place at 6.30 p.m. on 23 January in Mr. Goldsmith's
suite at the Beau Rivage. Tran opened by saying that he had been
specially requested by Di Martino to undertake a "diplomatic" assignment
in relation to certain political aspects of a preferences scheme as they
affected the Community. He felt that the most important part of his task
was to try to arrange some reasonably satisfactory compromise on the Hong
Kong question. He then went on to outline the Community's present
position in the following terms:-
Chapters 25 99 of the BN
(1) No exceptions
(2) Duty free entry
(3) The duty free entry to be limited by quotas. The basis of these
would be Community imports from developing countries (excluding
those already entitled to duty free entry, e.g., associated states
and territories and Magreb countries) in a representative year,
say, 1967 or 1968, plus 5% of imports of the item in question from
developed countries. As at present this latter figure would
include imports from Hong Kong.
CONFIDENTIAL
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