C
THE UK AND EEC IMPORT REGIMES FOR COTTON TEXTILES
ANNEX A
The UK's quota controls on cotton textiles, which we have said we will terminate at the end of this year, cover all the developing
countries - some 77 of them, including Spain, Yugoslavia and Greece, but excluding Portugal. The UK has bilateral arrangements with our two largest suppliers, whereby these two countries restraint their
exports to agreed levels. The arrangements covering the other developing countries (that is, the global quota countries) were to some extent imposed upon them, and have never been formally agreed by them. The global quota is split into two halves half taking the form of country quotas, administered by the exporting country, and the other half being distributed to UK importers, who can use their entitlement to import from any country within the global group. In both the bilateral and the global arrangements, the quotas are broken down into over twenty categories of cotton yarn, woven, cotton cloth and woven cotton made-ups. There is however no restriction on knitted cotton cloth and made-ups.
2. The UK has excluded most textiles from its UNCTAD offer, and from 1 January 1972 will have tariff protection against imports of cotton textilos from all sources except EFTA and the Irish Republic.
3. In the EEC, the Commission has negotiated restraint arrangements with only seven low-cost suppliers of cotton textiles; the product coverage differs from the UK's arrangements, in that cotton yarn is not controlled, but knitted as well as woven cotton is. In addition to these Community-wide restraint agreements, individual EEC member countries operate controls on imports of cotton textiles from the lesser
developing countries.