E.B. & Co. 56-3197 9/75
Registry No.
DRAFT MINUTE
ECURITY
SSIFICATION
To:-
Top Sec.et.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
The Prime Minister
1.
bc Sir John Hunt
Type 1 +
FROM
Secretary of State
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
1170
MULTIFIBRE ARRANGEMENT
But at
The Commission proposals for conducting the bilateral
agreements under the multifibre arrangement have now been
presented to Member States. They clearly need to be
carefully considered and discussed in the Community.
first sight they appear to provide the reasons for ensuring
that Community internal global import ceilings are applied
to all low-cost suppliers, with extra stringency for the
particularly sensitive textile products, I accept the
paramount importance of ensuring that these ceilings
2.
are accepted and would not advocate any policy, the consequence;
of which would be any risk of exceeding them. However, the
distribution of quotas to individual supplying countries
within these global ceilings does cause us some difficulty.
The Commission's chief textile negotiator, Tran var
Tinh, has visited the main supplying countries to explain
the Commission proposals. When he visited Hong Kong, the
figures he suggested caused the Hong Kong Government
considerable concern. The figures for Hong Kong's quotas
under its new bilateral with the Community would mean a
considerable cutback for Hong Kong's exports to below
the 1976 levels at which the Community intends to stablise
its import penetration overall. Tran has since spoken to
UK officials and has confimed that cuts will be necessary
from Hong Kong as from the other dominant suppliers,
South Korea and Taiwan, in order to ensure that no cuts
need to be applied to the poorest developing producers