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CONFIDENTIAL
Office of the United Kingdom Permanent Representative
to the European Communities
Avenue des Arts 52 1040 Brussels
Telephone 13 77 80
Aw Man has been
LA
Z
M D Butler Esq FCO
Your reference
Our reference 6/6/8
Date
1 February 1974
15761
Michael,
GENERALISED SCHEME OF PREFERNECES: HONG KONG
1 In my letter to you of January 25 I said that I would be having lunch with Van Thinh Tran this week and that I would then report to you at greater length. I lunched with him to-day.
2 Tran is a key figure in this operation. He has been in the Commission for thirteen years and during the whole of that time he has dealt with questions relating to developing countries, first on commodities and then on preferences. He is the man who will draft any Commission proposals, and if we do not get full co-operation from him it will be difficult to get things moving. His long-term aim is to get rid of all the paraphernalia of sensitive products, semi-sensitive products, plafonds and butoirs; and he reckons that this might be managed in about three or four years. In the interim period his objective is to extend the existing scheme as much as he possibly can year by year. He thinks he may be batting on a good wicket in 1974 since he foresees that the effect of the oil crisis will be a severe deterioration in the balance of payments of most develop- ing countries; that the industrialised West as a whole will, because of their own difficulties, be unable or unwilling significantly to increase aid provision for these countries; and that the one thing they might do at no great cost to them- selves is to improve the terms of access for products exported from the developing countries. He saw 1973 as the year in which the British were obliged by the terms of accession to make their own arrangements conform to those already in force in the old Community; and, this having been done, he hopes that we shall be tireless in advocacy of more generalised preferences.
3 Having applauded these admirable sentiments, we then had a discussion about the best possible modus operandi in 1974. Tran says that his aim is to get the CollegiateCommission's approval for a new set of proposals not later than June. He
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