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To: Director of Commerce and Industry, Hong Kong.
From: Counsellor (Hong Kong Affairs), Geneva.
Memorandum No. 151
File No. GVA/10/8/1
314
Date: 2 November 1970
Generalised Preferences
I should report here that, while I was in Brussels for the EEC Cotton
Textiles negotiations, I took the opportunity to call on Tran for an exchange
of views.
2.
He
Tran appeared to be as pessimistic as when I saw him in Geneva.
now professed to be the only official in the Commission dealing with
preferences who was still in favour of including Hong Kong in the EEC
scheme. Di Martino had been in favour but he had now given up in the face
of opposition. The others dealing with the subject were all against.
While, of the Member States, only Germany seemed to be prepared to contem- plate anything for Hong Kong. The French opposition seemed to be "total".
3. I repeated my previous arguments with even more force than usual.
The Community were burying their heads in the sand if they thought they could solve their problems by the simple exclusion of Hong Kong.
If they did so, and the Americans did likewise, Hong Kong exports would almost
certainly be displaced from the American market towards the European market. Furthermore, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore et al would soon move in to fill
the gap.
On top of that there was the enlargement of the Community. The heads of the Six appeared to be so wooden that it was becoming necessary to use a sledgehammer to drive in the simple point that Hong Kong was a British dependent territory.
4. Tran replied that the Six knew that, in the last resort, the U.K. would not stay out of the Community for the sake of Hong Kong,
And their view was
to say "no" to Hong Kong and to the U.K. on this aspect. It was an
opposition based on irrational emotion and fear but it existed;
personally sorry that it did.
he was
5.
I said that, in these circumstances, we would have to calm the patient down and then feed him a diet of facts and analysis to show him that it
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