CONFIDENTIAL
COUNCIL OF MINISTERS (FOREIGN AFFAIRS) BRUSSELS, 19/20 SEPTEMBER 1977
PROPOSAL FOR BILATERAL TEXTILES AGREEMENTS
Discussion Document:
79
BRIEF NO 10
COM(77)430: Commission recommendation on
negotiating directives for bilateral
agreements under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement.
INTRODUCTION
1. The Commission will ask the Council to approve the broad lines of its overall approach on future import arrangements for textiles. It will seek agreement to the five points in Section IV of the Discussion Document. The most important of these, Point 5, would, subject to subsequent resolution of the remaining problems, give the Commission authority to open negotiations for bilateral agreements with the Community's major supplying countries. The breakdown of the quota figures between the Community's various supplying countries, which will form the core of the Commission's negotiating mandate with each individual country, has not yet been completed. The breakdown will be submitted, after the Council, to the Member States at Working Group and COREPER level.
LINE TO TAKE
2.
The UK's overriding concerns for the Community's textile approach are well known:
(a) any commitment to sign a renewed MFA must be firmly
(b)
conditional on full satisfaction in the bilateral
agreements;
the totality of imports, particularly for the sensitive products, must be kept within the internal global
import ceilings which the Community is now in the process of agreeing.
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CONFIDENTIAL
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