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purely emotional and subjective considerations. To this Wintermans (Netherlands), the Chaiman of the Group, said to me privately that the best thing we could do would be to change the name of Hong Kong, which was like a red rag to a bull as far as business organisations in the EEC were concerned. I do understand, however, that efforts are now being made in the Commission to consider again whether some more "objective" competitive need formula can be found which would reduce the
Further points degree of discrimination against Hong Kong.
are that the EEC may now exclude cotton textiles, and perhaps also non-cotton textiles, and that in some products individual countries may be limited to less than 50% of the quota (perhaps in some cases going as low as 25%). If this were to happen it seems probable that all textiles would be excluded from most
schemes (including the U.K. 's).
Further discussion of the text
10.
1.
A clean draft will be
The rest of the meeting was taken up with a long and
tedious discussion of the texts of both Part I and Part II.
Very considerable redrafting was agreed, particularly in the
case of Part
available in time
for the next meeting of the Group scheduled for 3-5 November, just before the Trade Committee on 67 (and perhaps the 8th).
However, I enclose tentative Sections of Part I,
provisionally agreed, to give some idea of the degree of re-
drafting required.
Conclusion
as
11. The atmosphere at this meeting was far worse than at any
previous meeting of the Group. There were long arguments
over procedural questions and many paragraphs of the
Secretariat's draft were wrangled over at great length.
At
times it appeared difficult to see how further progress could
be made, a situation that was not helped by rather poor
/Chairmanship
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