TNAG-0341-FCO40-377-Effects-on-Hong-Kong-of-long-term-policy-for-textiles-in-int-1972 — Page 4

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UNITED KINGDOM DELEGATION

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TO THE EUROPEAN CONTUNITIES AVENUE DES ARTS 52

1040 BRUSSELS

28 July 1972

R B Crowson Esq

Hong Kong and Indian Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office London SW1

Dear

Crowson,

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REF.

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HONG KONG'S GATT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ENLARGED EEC

1.

Thank you for your letter of 5 July on Hong Kong's GATT relationship with the enlarged EEC. I am sorry that we have taken a little longer than you hoped to reply

to your letter but we have been exceptionally busy here with the negotiations with the non-candidate EFTA countries.

On

2. Your first question is whether the Community would be likely to prefer Hong Kong to enjoy a de facto independent status in the GATT or whether they would be opposed to any separate Hong Kong presence at GATT meetings and would prefer representation by the official U K delegate. this point our judgment here would be that the Community, i e the Commission and the other 9 Member States, are likely to have a preference for arrangements which make it. quite clear that it is Hong Kong which they are dealing with in the GATT and which makes a clear distinction between the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, even if for GATT legal reasons some purely formal UK label has still

The salient to be given to a Hong Kong representative. point here is I think the fact that great care was taken during the enlargement negotiations to ensure that no part of the EEC or EURATOM Treaties or of the Treaty of Accession itself applied to Hong Kong (this principle is reflected in Article 26(2) and Article 27 of the Act of Accession.) Anything which in the slightest respect blurs the clear intention that the Common External Tariff and the Common Commercial Policy should be applied to Hong Kong as to a tird country would be, for sound practical and economic reasons, unpalatable to the Community. there are likely to be doctrinal objections, principally from the Commission, to any arrangement which seemed to preserve something of the U K's independent status in the GATT in fields such as tariff negotiations where the Community operates as a single unit with the Commission as its appointed spokesman.

Moreover,

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