+
IN
1.07
20 SFP 1970
MWK 4/304/1
Mr. Christofas
Mr. Mellon
Mr. Marshall
Mr. Anderson
220
Reference..
Enlargement Negotiations: German views
I lunched on 14 September with Mr. Mueller-Thuns and Mr. Kittel who are both on the Economics Ministry side of the German Permanent Representation here and are concerned with the negotiations.
Timetable
2.
Mueller-Thuns said he hoped we would be able to accept the offer of the afternoon of 27 October for our next Ministerial meeting with the Community. He expected this date to be finally agreed by the Committee of Permanent Representatives on 15 September and then to be put to us. I said that we would no doubt respond when we were approached formally; but was not one afternoon a little short, particularly if, as was hoped, this was to be the occasion of a first discussion on Community finance on the basis of an interim report from the Commission? Mueller-Thuns said that the meeting could easily be prolonged into the evening; and he wondered whether, even if the Commission had by then produced an interim report on our paper on Community finance, the Community would`in fact be ready to discuss such interim conclusions with us by that date.
Common Commercial Policy
3.
In reply to a question, Mueller-Thuns said he did not think the Community would now wish to raise the question of the Common Commercial Policy at the meeting of Deputies on 16 September. This had been a German suggestion which had been aired in Bonn with Sir Con O'Neill when the Germans had been looking for new subjects to fill up the agenda. But there was really very little to say on the subject. All the Community could do was to ask us to insert an E.E.C. clause in any bilate- ral agreements we negotiated. They had no very compelling arguments to advance in favour of our doing this; no doubt we would do it anyway if it suited our purpose to do so.
Both Mueller-Thuns and Kittel were very categorical that the Community would not extend the interim arrange- ments for negotiating bilateral trade agreements beyond the end of 1972. There was a clear Council decision that only Community agreements would be negotiated after 1972. And they argued that Germany, which had made the nost trouble about the 1969 Decision, would be parti cularly reluctant to re-open the matter since : the turn which their osteolitik had taken, because this would lay them open to the charge that they were pursuing bilateral objectives in contravention of. their Community obligations.
15.