The Kulti Fibre reapsenont
The Multi Fibre Arrangement (MFA), which regulates international trade in certain textile and clothing prod- ucts, came into force in January 1974 and will expire on 31 December 1977. The future of this arrangement has been under review for some months and most participating countries have advocated its extension without modific- ation. This is partly due to satisfaction that the agreement has maintained a reasonable balance between the interests of importing and exporting countries and partly to the realisation that to insist on amendments which favoured one side or the other would upset this belance and open up the whole MPA to lengthy debate with the risk of not echieving any more satisfactory arrangement in the end and of upsetting international trade in textiles.
2. The 330, however, has indicated that it proposes to seek substantial modifications to the MFA and it is now in process of agreeing on a mandate for the discussions on extension of the MFA in the next Textiles Committee meeting in Geneva in June. The U.K. and France are reported to be the EC member states most insistent on modifications, but it is known that other member states are opposed to this view for a variety of reasons. Governments of most 30 merber states have been under pressure from their domestic textile industry and from trade unions to seek modification of the NEA on the grounds that it has failed to provide adequate protection for domestic textile industries in developed countries during tines of recession. The following paragraphs describe the most important changes which certain member: states of the 33C wish to make in extending the NFA.
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'Globalisation'
The General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) does not permit importing countries to take discriminatorg action against any particular sources of supply and it provides for exporting countries affected by restrictions to demand compensation or take retaliatory action. The MPA, on the other hand, provides for importing countries to take action against imports from perticular sources of low cost surely which are causing or threatening to cruse disruption and obliges sorting countries to accent restrictions in these circumstances without the right to commonsation or retaliation. In other words, the arplication of the GITT safeguard provisions is 'global' whereas the ME is 'selective'.
4. Those 270 member states advocating modification of the MP4 base their arguments for introducing a global quota for low cost suppliers on the difficulty they have exerienced in dealing wish a multiplicity of new suppliers on the basis of the criteria of 'market disruption' laid down in the existing KPA. They are reluctant to deal with
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