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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
Telephone 01-
270 2291
P Thomas Esq UKREP Brussels
Нивого 2
Your reference
Our reference
*
Date
C & JUN 1967
20 May 1987
58
Dew Peter,
MACAU
%
1. You may have seen correspondence between the FCO and HM Embassy Lisbon relating to our concern over a possible influx of Macanese to the UK. The attached briefing note gives a summary of the problem. Correspondence rests with Doug Martin's letter of
6 May.
It would clearly be futile to raise this issue with the
Our various Portuguese before their elections on 19 July.
2.
attempts to sensitise the Portuguese to this problem in bilateral contacts since mid-1985 have met with courteous but negative responses. You may recall that we did prepare the ground in the final phase of the accession negotiations to raise this in a Community context. The conclusions of the 32nd session of the negotiating conference with Portugal, held on 6/7 June 1985 includes the following passage:
"The Deputies Conference took note of the Memorandum submitted by the Portuguese delegation explaining the position of residents of Macau under Portuguese nationality law and notes that further contacts are likely to be necessary on this matter in due course."
We should be interested to know if Sir D Hannay would see advantage in having a word with Sr Mathias in the latter half of July, ie after the Portuguese elections, to run through this back history and to investigate with him how we might best proceed, either on a bilateral basis or in a Community context.
Lous Your en
Rober
RA E Gordon
European Community Department (External)
A34AAY
CC: HKD
FED
SED
P Durbin Esq, IND Home Office D G Martin Esq, Lisbon
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