TNAG-2182-FCO40-3119-Hong-Kong-nationality-international-support-1990 — Page 127

If our arguments are to prevail we shall need to be able to

persuade our partners that other major markets including yours

are genuinely open to European products and European investment.

I shall talk more about that later on.

Are we then becoming inward looking? It is certainly true that

there is a very long European agenda. We are moving steadily

towards the completion of the EC single market by 1992. We shall

shortly absorb the present GDR into the Community. We have to

find new arrangements for promoting cooperation with the EFTA

countries and with the new Governments of Eastern Europe. And

we are committed to two inter-governmental conferences starting

in December on the economic and monetary union and the political

union of the EC itself.

All this represents a massive change in the Community and its

relations with its neighbours. We have for example been calling

for over 40 years for the unification of Germany.

-

happening and faster than anyone had expected.

think carefully about the consequences of that.

view have had to be

Now it is

We have had to

Many points of

re-examined. But so far

as the British

Government is concerned the conclusion we have drawn from that

re-examination

is that German

unification is to be warmly

welcomed. It represents a natural aspiration for the Germans

And our experience of the Federal Republic over 40

years has been as one of our best and most trusted friends.

themselves.

have now

We

of

secured Soviet agreement that the unified state

Germany shall remain in NATO. This ensures the trans-atlantic