(3001) Dd.145244 400m 8/73 L.Ltd. Gp.839
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Registry No.
REPLY TO DRAFT
DRAFT PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION Type 1 +
SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential,
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
To:-
FROM
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
At a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the EEC
on 6 November, my Rt Hon Friend, the Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, made a strong statement on the
position of Hong Kong. He said that during the
enlargement negotiations in 1971 the Community had
agreed to admit Hong Kong to its Generalised System
of Preferences, subject to the exclusion of her
textiles and footwear exports Our Chief Negotiator
at the time had agreed to this arrangement and he had
made it clear to the Community that it would be the
United Kingdom's continuing concern to avoid
discrimination against/Hong Kong. The arrangements
agreed by our partners in 1971 may have seemed to them
not ungenerous. But an important consideration now was
that since 1971 the situation had changed to the
detriment of Hong Kong and that the Philippines,
Thailand and Yugoslavia, all of them serious compet-
itors of Hong Kong, had become beneficiaries under the
Community's scheme in respect of cotton textiles. We
had examined this matter carefully and had concluded
that in present circumstances it was no longer
acceptable for discrimination to apply against Hong
Kong.
/As this