CONFIDENTIAL
Add after para 24 of draft brief
25.
Adaptation to EEC arrangements is also
relevant to the question of duty-free quotas.
To Ministers were to decide that some form of
quantitative control on cotton textiles should
be re-imposed in 1972, the developing
countries' sense of grievance would undoubtedly
be somewhat reduced were the arrangements to
incorporate duty-free quotas within the overall
quantitative restrictions. DTI consider,
only to reject, this in paragraph 39 of their
submission, arguing not only that Lancashire
would not like it but that it would involve a
D
good deal of "counter-marching" on entry into
the EEC in the process of conforming to the
Community's Generalised Preference Scheme
arrangements on cotton textiles. It is true
that a considerable degree of revision would
have to take place on adaptation to the
Community's GPS, but
(i) this is true of all our GPS arrangements,
since our scheme is based on duty-free entry
subject to an apparatus of safeguards, while
the Community's is based on duty-free quotas;
(ii) we do not plan to adapt to the EEC's GPS
until one year after entry (ie 1 January 1974);
and
(iii) the adoption of duty-free quotas on all
textiles would at least reduce the discrepan-
cies between our and the EEC's GPS arrangements
on textiles in general.
CONFIDENTIAL
./2.