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producing sugar (he mentioned the Caribbean, Mauritius and East Africa), but he did not see why Dutch butter could not be sold on the British market on the same basis as Danish or Irish butter from ratification. Mr. de Koster said that the British application for membership of the Community should be regarded as an engagement: once engaged you looked differently at other girls. Ir. Lardinois returned to his point about price levels for the other candidates. Were we sure we could not fix something with the Danos and the Irish? There had been two prices in France for the last 18 months; this might provide a starting point for examination of the possibilities. Sir Con O'Neill said that we could adopt the regulations of the Community system from the start, but would need a period of adaptation. He did not think it mattered if we were phasing out our defic- iency payments system and changing the pattern of our over- seas purchases during the transitional period. The point was that we accepted the Community system and would be beginning to operate it. r. Lardinois said that it would greatly help if we could eliminate deficiency payments at least for grains from, for example, the beginning of 1973, Nr. Rippon repeated that G were changing to the levy system anyway but for the sake of stability of the British market and our overseas suppliers wo would need time to adapt. He accepted that British prices would have to go up but hoped that the Community ones would come down. Mr. Lardinois again urged us to adopt a levy systen without deficiency payments for grains from 1973. it would be impossible for the British Minister of Agriculture to sit at Brussels with his colleagues if I had not by then adopted the common agricultural policy. Sir Con Weill repeated that we had already accepted the policy. Dr. Luns said he could not understand Mr. Lardinois' difficulty. Did he have objections in principle to adaptation or what? The British system could not be changed overnight and British prices were going up anyway. Mr. de Koster remarked that we had so far been
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