FREE TRADE AREA

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28552, 3 April 1958, Page 13

FREE TRADE AREA

“Negotiations At New Low”

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, April 2. The protracted negotiations of the Ministerial group which has been discussing the proposed European Free Trade Area in Paris have reached what one commentator calls “a new low.” Last session was adjourned because the agenda was exhausted and agricultural proposals rom several delegations which had been expected to be tabled were not ready. The Ministers have now put off their next meeting until the first week in May. The “Financial Times” says it is hoped that by that time the European Common Market proposals will have been approved and circulated and says that if this hope is fulfilled the real negotiations may at last begin. “But in view of past disappointments no-one in Paris is too sanguine about this,” says the newspaper.

"Reports of the German suggestion that more time should be given to negotiation of a free trade area have attracted some interest.

“As prospects of the fulfilment of the time-table set by Mr R. G. Maudling, who is in charge of the British side of the talks —agreement on the main lines of the free trade area treaty by midsummer —look increasingly dim, any ideas for prolonging the time available for negotiations are likely to be welcomed.”

Reuter’s Paris correspondent says observers in Paris think the latest failure to make any progress in bridging the gap between British and French opinion on the Free Trade Area and Common Market has increased the danger of the economic dispute between France and Britain.

Delegates, he says, reported a general reluctance to tackle fundamental problems in the absence of France’s counterproposals for the Free Trade Area.