5.
The US agreed that some multilateral element was essential, though they thought there might eventually have to be some mix of bilateral and multilateral procedures to give the flexibility needed. to solve this problem. Pending agreement on multilateral procedures they were pursuing bilateral consultations on the basis of refined notifications.
6. Canada preferred a bilateral request and offer procedure subject to multilateral monitoring. They thought it might become appropriate to adopt some sort of multilateral approach as the negotiations developed, but progress would be made essentially through bilateral procedures.
7. Japan pointed out that as most countries have illegal QRs for socio-economic reasons a formal approach would merely aggravate their difficulties. A more realistic approach would be ongoing bilateral consultations to provide the means to study the "augmen→ tation of quotas and trade liberalisation". Progress in such dis-
cussions would depend very much on progress in other groups.
the
8. For the Community Abbott (Commission) pointed out that selective safeguard action could provide the possibility for more liberalisation of QRS. Progress in this field was linked to progress elsewhere in the negotiations and Australia was wrong to try to untance situation by insisting on prior progress in QRs. There had been many unsuccessful attempts in GATT over the past 10 years to solve the problem by a multilateral approach. A better way to achieve progress would be through a pragmatic approach as regards the GATT consistency of the various restrictions in the light of the socio- economic factors involved and the practical problems to be solved. Solutions to these problems would depend very much on work in other areas of the negotiations, eg safeguards. The Community was not enthusiastic about the particular multilateral approach suggested by Australia, as it would permit the maintenance of restrictions under escape clauses like the PPA. Recent bilateral consultations with one delegation (US) had revealed that a few measures that they applied (the Jones Act) had a much greater trade restrictive effect than the numerically greater restrictions imposed by the Community.
9. Romania referred to the continuation of discriminatory QRs imposed under Protocols of Accession, She recognised that these were a fact of life but wanted more objective criteria to be written into GATT rules to justify their continued maintenance. They should also be subject to GATT surveillance as bilateral justification of injury caused by Romanian exports had often been very thin.
10.
Austria and Hong Kong favoured a multilateral approach although the latter was not enthusiastic about the delayed phasing out of illegal QRS in the Australian proposal. The developing countries (India, Brazil and Mexico) noted that the Australian proposals contained advance phasing out of QRs of export interest to them. They too noted that the Australian suggestions reflected some of their own proposals, which still remained on the table particularly as regards the subject of differential treatment.
x2-
/11.