D22/5
Department of Trade and Industry
COMMERCIAL RELATIONS AND EXPORTS
1 Victoria Street London SW1H OET
Telex 27366 Answer Back DTIHQ London Telegrams Advantage London SW1
Telephone 01-222 7877 ext
Entw It Mi Goodfetton
jou action is invultetim
with
Muse
кодал
ん
M. Laird Esq
Hong Kong Dept
Downing Street
Your reference
RECEIVED IN
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Our reference
REGISTRY Na 51 18 MAY 1972
Date
HKK
6/2
15 May 1972
LAST
Rad
Dew M. Laird,
on 21 April
NEXT
REF.
After the meeting with Mr Haddon-Cave, I agreed to write to you setting out the problem of Hong Kong's GATT status, so that you could consult the FCO Legal Adviser.
2.
Hong Kong's present status is a question to which much consideration has already been given, and I think the position is now clear. The governing rules are Articles XXIV (1) and XXVI of GATT; Hong Kong is a metropolitan Customs territory of the UK (see A XXIV (1)), and the UK has accepted GATT in respect of Hong Kong (see Article XXVI (5)(a)). Hong Kong therefore is treated as a contracting party under the terms of Article XXIV (1) and has rights and obligations towards all other GATT members, with the exception of her relationship to the UK to which the proviso at the end of Article XXIV (1) applies.
As
3. This legal position will not be affected by UK entry into the EEC in itself (this does not mean that the practical position will remain unaltered, but this is another question). At present, the EEC itself is not a contracting party to GATT, while its member countries (present and prospective) are so. long as this remains the position, Hong Kong will continue to stand in a GATT relationship to all the individual members of the Community apart from the UK. What is worrying her, however, is what would be the legal position if the Community became a contracting party to GATT in its own right as well as, or instead of, the individual members. Would Hong Kong's legal status vis-a-vis nine out of the ten members spread, as it were to the tenth (the UK)?; the non-relationship with the tenth infect her relationship with the other nine?
4.
or would
It would be useful to have your Legal Adviser's views on the above question. I do not think there are any relevant GATT precedents, and though one would have thought that logically Hong Kong's previous relationship with nine-tenths of the Community should govern that with one-tenth rather than vice versa, I do not know whether this would be the legal position. But Hong Kong's immediate concern, and the main purpose of this letter, is to find out whether there is any way in which she can acquire GATT rights independently of the UK.