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کنده
Miss M I Rothwell
Your reference
Foreign & Commonwealth Office Whitehall
ར་ །,
臂
Our reference
711758
SW1
MAI
Date
2. March 1973
Dear Miss Rothmall
Sme 1/3
INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON TRADE IN WILD LIFE EEC SOLIDARITY
44
49
by More.
Please refer to my letter of 6 February and Mr Brearley's of 15 February, about the implications of a clause in the Convention exempting obligations under Customs unions etc. in so far as they related to trade within the union.
I am not clear as to exactly where we go from here. At the moment we have controls on imports from all sources for the purposes of conservation of species for a few products. These are plumage, Vicuna hair and skin, leopard, tiger and cheetah skins. We are about to introduce controls on products of baleen whales. We are under pressure to impose restrictions on imports of pickled birds from Cyprus on grounds that I am now told may mainly be conservalior of the species. We also restrict the importation of a wide range of live animals,
the choice of which is a matter for the DES. The Home Office restrict the importation of live birds for reasons of conservation. We shall, in due course, have to comply with the provisions in the Convention. Is it intended that we should in future not include any of these animals or products in our restrictions if they are imported from the Community, or are we to confine such cases to those included in the Convention, or are we to include goods imported from the Community in our restrictions in all cases pending an eventual Community policy? The last course seems to us to be the right one and we propose for the monent, therefore, to restrict importation from whatever source the goods are consigned. We shall also reserve our rights under Article 36 of the Treaty of Rome to refuse to exempt imports from other members of the Community until HMG have agreed that some sort of exemption is required. In other words our agreement to the Customs Union clause in the Convention in no way inhibits our full rights under Article 36.
If you agree with the foregoing the question is how we proceed so far as the Community is concerned. My inclination would be to have it on record as soon as possible how we view things so as to minimise any argument that we have forgone our rights under Article 36 by not speaking out promptly. None of this means that we in any way should wish to stand out against the common list of animale and their products for the Community's import and export trade which would be subject to common controls whether these were the minimum required by the Convention or went further. We think this would be an excellent idea. In the meantime, however, we feel that it would be difficult to exclude imports from other members of the Community from our controls without incurring charges of discrimination, whether these would arise from importers, conservationists or
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