STATEMENT GIVEN CUT AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE
ON 12 NOVEMBER 19??
The following statement has been received from Mr. D.H. Jordan (who is still in Europe) on the negotiations with the EEC on the future of Hong Kong textiles exports to the Community from 1 January 1978. The statement sums up his views as at the time of the suspension of these negotiations by the EEC on 8 November.
The Hong Kong delegation arrived in Brussels on 8th October to begin two days later, at the request of the Community, to negotiate a new textiles agreement to run from 1st January 1978.
We came ready to negotiate, in good faith, under the terms of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (The MFA), and even prepared to consider reasonable departures from its terms, where a case could be made, in accordance with a document to which Hong Kong and, let me emphasise, the EEC subscribed during a meeting of the GATT textiles committee in the summer when the future of the MFA was under consideration.
When the negotiations finally started, a week late because the Community had difficulty agreeing a mandate, it soon became apparent there were three main areas of difficulty.
First, as we had already been led to anticipate, the EEC idea of discriminating against a few major suppliers, including Hong Kong, to cut quotas back even more severely than in the case of others. This was so that these quantities could be allocated to other suppliers.
Secondly, the basic draft agreement produced by the EEC provided for a system of import control, which if implemented, would mean lower prices for exporters and higher profits for importers.
Thirdly, the Community had evolved a system of categorisation and classification (based on their still unpublished customs classification for 1978) which would, without doubt cause appalling disruption to the trade at both ends and have the effect of reducing actual exports still further.
These, in the words of the representative of another country faced with the EEC's demand, we could only regard as radical, not reasonable, departures from the MFA and as such quite unjustified.
The EEC tried to present as meaningful concessions the right to export control - although there is not, I believe, a single agreement under the MFA that provides for import control and so-called 'security', which meant an undertaking to abide by an agreement entered into freely by them. The
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