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CONFIDENTIAL
PRIORITY
MEMORANDUM
To: Director of Commerce and Industry, Hong Kong
5/1138100 C.c. 12/30/20
23 JAN 1969
Repeated to: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Hong Kong Department)
From: Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs), Geneva.
Memorandum No. 10/69
File No. GVA/4/37
GATT
Date: 22 January 1969
French Import Restrictions
As you know, the French are now taking part in the work of the
Committee on Trade and Development, although they have apparently not yet
accepted Part IV of the GATT.
2. They have recently notified to the GATT a list of their import
restrictions (L/2981 Add.16 of 8 January enclosed). This list has been
fairly eagerly awaited by a number of contracting parties and it seems
bound to come up for discussion in some GATT forum or other in the fairly
near future.
The possibilities could be
3.
(a) the CTC Residual Restrictions Group,
(b) a group on quantitative restrictions that may be set up by the
Industrial Products Committee in connection with the exercise
on Non-Tariff Barriers, or
(c) (possible but less likely) in the context of some procedure that
may arise from the Council's consideration of the New Zealand
proposals on residual restrictions.
One or other of these exercises will obviously provide a good
opportunity to bring into the open the French discriminatory quotas against
Hong Kong and to examine them on these restrictions. However, I see from
the lists circulated by the French that they have deliberately omitted to
notify their Hong Kong list, probably because, being discriminatory, it is
doubly illegal in the GATT.
Undoubtedly, to raise this issue in an open GATT forum could be
quite embarrassing for the French and they would, to say the least, be not
/a
CONFIDENTIAL