TNAG-1150-FCO40-1430-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-the-European-Community-1982 — Page 24

OCTOBER 1982

DSR 11C

ANNOX D

COPY NO

ANGLO-GERMAN SUMMIT

28-29 OCTOBER 1982

STEERING BRIEF

Brief by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

INTRODUCTION

1.

This Summit, the twelfth in the series of regular

consultations at Head of Government level, will be

Chancellor Kohl's first. It provides us with an excellent

opportunity to establish an early working relationship with

Dr Kohl and his team and to impress on them the importance

we attach to strong Anglo-German relations. We shall clearly

need to use the occasion to bring home to the new Federal

Chancellor the case for a lasting solution to the Community Budget problem, while the Germans are likely to press their ideas for 'new impulses' within the Community. We can expect

the other main themes to be international economic and trade

questions, transatlantic and East/West relations and defence.

2.

ཀ.

Dr Kohl has little experience of international affairs. In the four weeks since he has held the Chancellorship the focus of his attention has been almost entirely domestic - altough he has visited both Paris and London briefly and has already experienced his first Franco-German Summit (21-22

October). His government had a difficult birth. The method

by which it came to power, the 'constructive vote of no confidence' has met with the disapproval of much of the electorate: Herr Schmidt was a popular Chancellor and Herr Genscher is widely blamed for disloyalty to the

-

SPD/FDP Coalition.

/3.