3.
The Community is near agreement on a mandate on which
the Commission will speak in Geneva.
to receive final approval very soon.
We expect that mandate
Until it does so, it
would not be appropriate to reveal the details of the
Community's negotiating mandate.
4.
The French announcement of GATT Article XIX measures
on four sensitive items (mens shirts, ladies blouses,
T-shirts and cotton yarn) came as a surprise to us too. It
remains to be seen how the Community will deal with this and
how it will affect the Community's relations with its textile
suppliers. The French action is a further indication of
the Community-wide problem which exists in the textile
industry.
BACKGROUND
5. The Community's negotiating mandate on cumulative
disruption involves the drawing up of "internal global
import ceilings" for a limited number of sensitive products.
The Community intends to negotiate new bilateral textile
agreements before the existing ones expire, with the existing
MFA, at the end of this year. The totality of import
quotas for these sensitive products will not be allowed by
the Community to exceed the internal global ceiling. The
Desire not to have a major revesolution of Community's intention is not to renegotiate the MFA to
allow this procedure but to state its position in Geneva
Cent
d work for the approval of other parties to the MFA
without renegotiation if possible. But some of the
But
So for as I know,
Community's other proposals, involving the reduction of growt
rates below the 6% prescribed in the existing MFA in situations
of high import penetration, may call for renegotiation?
5. The mandate has now been approved by all Member States
at COREPER level and it is expected that the Foreign
Affairs Council on 21 June will give its approval without
/discussion.