Mr JR de Fonblanque
DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY
Office of the UK Permanent Representative
to the European Community
Avenue des Arts 52
1040 Brussels
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London SW1
Dean John
25 April 1973
S
S
Meeting of textiles group on 16 April
Your telegram no 2093 of 17 April appeared to us to need some amplification, especially for the benefit of the Hong Kong Government, and just before Easter I drafted a telegram to you on the lines of the contents of this letter. It was never sent off, partly because of the holiday, and partly because it was felt that since no action is required the message could just as well go in a letter.
The amplification refers to paragraph 3 of the telegram, concerning the opening of negotiations with Hong Kong. Our intervention took the form of a query about the urgency of the need for negotiations and a request for those countries which had expressed themselves as troubled to consider whether the present trade and market situation demanded the immediate adoption of a mandate for the Commission to negotiate.
Contrary to the information about Dutch attitudes provided by Dorward in Iondon on 13 April, and perhaps to the gist of Hong Kong's telegram no 428 of 24 April, there was a clear indication from the Netherlands delegation that unilateral action by Hong Kong with respect to their market (though not necessarily a carbon copy of what was done for Germany) would have been welcome.
The agreement to defer reference to COREPER while the Dutch considered the new sensitive list was only reluctantly accepted by the Commission. Ernst urged the need for a quick decision and made it clear that he suspected that the pause would be used for illegal bilateral contacts between Benelux and Hong Kong. He made a thinly veiled reference to the recent announcement of non-Community Benelux restraints on imports of electronic products from Japan
/It was not