CONFIDENTIAL
ANNEX C
THE LEGAL ASPECT
1.
Alignment of the UK's GSP with that of the EEC is covered
by Protocol 23 of the Treaty of Accession.
The terms of the
explicit agreement concerning Hong Kong reached during the
enlargement negotiations are not recorded in the Act of Accession
itself, but in the records of the enlargement conference.
constitutes a legally binding agreement.
This
The Community's GSP is
implemented by means of annual Council Regulations.
Those
concerning textiles and footwear omit Hong Kong from the list of
beneficiaries. Accordingly, it would, as a pure matter of
Community law, be possible to modify the relevant regulations by
including Hong Kong among the list of beneficiary countries,
since this would not involve any breach of the Act of Accession
itself.
2. The Legal Advisers consider, however, that the terms of the
Community Agreement on Hong Kong in principle regulate definitively
the question whether and on what conditions Hong Kong should be
included among the beneficiaries of the Community GSP scheme.
Therefore, to seek to re-open the terms of an agreement formally recorded in the records of the enlargement conference, it would
need to be proved without any question of doubt that the Community GSP scheme for textiles (or footwear) has been modified since 1971
for other beneficiaries as regards the size of quotas and the
number of beneficiaries. In other words it would need to be
established that discrimination against Hong Kong in favour of its principal competitors among the developing countries had been
/intensified
CONFIDENTIAL