TEXTILE WORKING PARTY
CONFIDENTIAL
FREE CIRCULATION OF TEXTILES IN THE ENLARGED EEC
REVIEW OF TACTICS
1 INTRODUCTION. For over a year we have recognised
that the progressive establishment of genuine free
circulation of textiles imported from low-cost sources
offers us the only realistic hope of evening out conditions
of competition facing textile manufacturers in Member
countries.
But although the objective of free circulation,
apart from being implicit in the Treaty of Rome, has been
accepted by Comitextil, and its main constituent
organisations, by the Commission (obviously) and by the
Member State governments, no practical progress has been
It is timely to review whether we could do more
to move things along because:
made.
2. the Commission (Mr Meynell) are at last showing
signs of wanting seriously to address the problem (but do not quite know where to begin);
b.
the British Textile Confederation suggests that our insistence on liberal principles, selectivity and justification for restraints in the working
out of Community mandates to negotiate with third countries is blocking the development of a Community textile trade policy and thereby making progress towards free circulation impossible. In particular, the BTC criticises our stand on the mandate for non-cotton restraints against Hong Kong, where we have firmly opposed any sort of Community restraint that would freeze imports
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