22.5.86
COUNCIL
22 May 1986
DRAFT REPLY CONCERNING THE STATUS OF HONG KONG
1.
Article XXVI:5(c) reads:
"If any of the customs territories, in respect of which a contracting party has accepted this Agreement, possesses or acquires full autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations and of the other matters provided for in this Agreement, such territory shall, upon sponsorship through
declaration by the responsible contracting part establishing the above-mentioned fact, be deemed to be a contracting party."
A
The Council decid. in 1963 that admission of contracting parties under the procedures of Article XXVI:5(c) should be carried out through a certification by the Executive Secretary to the effect that the conditions of Article XXVI:5(c) have been fulfill (document C/30). Such certifications "would be brought to
notice of the Council Or the CONTRACTING PARTIES
session 80 that note could be taken of them and
extended to the new contracting parties".
when
a we
3. The Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom in a Declaration circulated on 23 April 1986 in document 1/5986 stated that Hong Kong possessed full autonomy
in the conduct of its
external commercial relations and of the other matters provided for in the General Agreement. [At the ame time as they received the
document on the admission of Hong Long, contracting rties also
received A communication from the People's Repubi. of Chias concerning Hong Kong's status after 1997.] On the basis of the Declaration by the United Kingdom, I certified in document L/5986 that the conditions of Article XXVI:5(c) had been met and that Hong
Kong had become a
acting party.
The procedure established in Article XXVI:5(c) and the Council decision of 1 May 1963 has thus been followed.
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