restrictions to be lifted.
In the absence of consensus it would
in theory be possible to push this through by a two-third majority vote but we think it unlikely that others would wish to take on the Chinese in this way and risk their withdrawal from the Protocol.
5. We have therefore reached the view that the only way of protecting our interests in maintaining Hong Kong/Taiwan trade in CFCs (and protecting the UK owned production facilities in Taiwan) would be to take the view that Article 4 of the Protocol does not apply to Taiwan. This does of course have the environmental downside of removing leverage over the Taiwanese to comply: we could tell thea that we expect them to comply with it but would find it difficult to enforce.
6.
So we need to persuade the Commission and Community partners that our literal interpretation of Article 4 is the correct one. I understand that the the Commission are currently drafting a new Regulation to implement the controls on halons and methyl bromide. We could encourage them to use the Protocol wording "any State not party" rather than the wording of Regulation 594/91 "non-Parties". We suspect that they might be amenable to this. You might point out that the French texts of the Protocol and Regulation do not have a difference in wording. It would be particularly useful if the Commission could be persuaded to include in the regulation a definition of the term "non-Parties", where used in the previous regulation, as meaning "any State not party". It would be useful if the Commission could propose this rather than the UK having to introduce it in the course of negotiations.
In any event we will also need to obtain the agreement of the Commission and other member states that the correct
7.
interpretation of both Article 4 of the Protocol and Articles 5 9 of Regulation 594/91 when applied to Taiwan is that Taiwan is not subject to trade controls. It is important that we get this understanding recorded in writing and would be grateful for your advice as to the forum in which this would be most appropriately raised.
8. Subject to any views you may have on tactics we would be grateful if you could take preliminary soundings with DGXI on all this. It would also be useful to have your further thoughts on handling. Ian Fletcher, DII, floated the suggestion (in his letter of 14 January to Sue Hogwood, copied to Wright), that we might wish to involve trade policy makers in this issue, perhaps by taking it to the 113 committee. It would be useful to have an UKREP view on this.
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We
Mrs S E Hogwood
Environment, Science and
Energy Department