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example, whether their "norm" will be duty free entry, 50% tariff cut or something even more modest for those products which do not figure on their initial exceptions list. They are keen that there should be safeguards written into the scheme which would enable them to withdraw or limit preferences if the occasion for it should arise, and they have always expressed scepticism about the virtues of the duty quota cum adjustment assistance mechanism advocated earlier by members of the EEC.
5. The single aspect which the United States has consis- tently strešsē、、and with increasing stridency in recent months) has been the extreme unlikelihood that Congress could be induced to pass the necessary enabling legislation unless it were first agreed that preferences enjoyed by some developed countries in the markets of some developing coun- tries should be phased out over a period of time. They have urged us to announce that we would accept the elimination of the preferences which we enjoy in a number of Commonwealth developing countries. They appear to believe that such a British initiative would improve the prospects that the renewal of the Yaounde Convention might be on terms which involved the elimination or phasing out of the tariff preferences which the EEC enjoys in the associated states.
6. The EEC are in some disarray. They were represented by France and the Federal Republic of Germany on the Special 0.E.C.D. Group which met under British Chairmanship for two years in 1966 and 1967 and which eventually produced a report, the terms of which were "broadly endorsed" at a meeting of 0.E.C.D. Ministers in December 1967 shortly before the Second UNCTAD Conference began. The French and German representatives on this group favoured the limitation of preferential advantages by duty quotas based on a pre- determined proportion of national production, consumption, or possibly imports and with a so called adjustment mechanism under which one or more developing countries might be excluded from the quotas on particular products on the basis of some predetermined statistical criterion. Although the administrative difficulties of implementing any such arrange- ments was stressed in the Special Group, the French and Germans were not deterred from continuing to advocate this particular method. They claimed that, if it were adopted, exceptions lists could be negligible and that there would be no need for supplementary safeguarding provisions.
7.
that
In fact
It might have been reasonable to expect, given the passage of time since the Second UNCTAD Conference, the EEC would have put some flesh on this skeleton. this has not happened. The Commission, who have latterly taken a more active part in the proceedings, appear to have doubts whether this "method" is a starter at all.
8.
The Germans told us in confidence that there has been some change in their position. They now take the view that the duty quota provisions need only apply to a limited range of sensitive products classified within Chapters 25 to 99 and that over the rest of this field, apart possibly from a limited number of total exceptions, duty free entry without limit could be conceded to exports of developing countries.
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