PR 33
K GIS 新聞處
HKK. 01/1
EX
25
A
978
1/2
DAILY INFORMATION BULLETIN
SUPPLEMENT
Friday, January 27, 1978
Speech By Governor At The Hong Kong General Chamber
Of Commerce Committee Members Annual Dinner
The following is the full text of the speech by the Governor,
Sir Murray MacLehose, at the Hong Kong General Chamber of Cormerce
Committee Members Annual Dinner this evening:
I should like to start by talking about and around the problem
that has concerned us all so much since the middle of last year, that is
the trend to protectionism, which was such a feature of our major markets
in 1977 and which shows no signs of failing.
I will not rake over the singularly unedifying story of the
negotiations in Brussels. All the credit goes to our negotiators and
all the odium to the Governments who handed down the mandate to which the
Commission worked,
The aspect of this diktet in which i soc tno greatest danger
is that the EEC breached and deliberately breached, and refused even to discuss as relevant, various international undertakings about the conduct of
The rule of law in international trade to which they had subscribed. international trade broadly associated with the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs has served the world well for a quarter of a century.
suffer.
It has been
If
a considerable factor in the unprecedented expansion of world trade.
these rules fall into disregard it will be the weak and the small who
Indeed it is significant that the most likely gainers from the EEC restrictions will not be the producers of Europe, far less the allegedly deserving and somewhat hypothetical new entrants into the market, but the exporters of large unrestrained countries like the U.S. and Japan.
/vie know
Issued by Government Information Services, Beaconsfield House, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-233191
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