E.E.C. Farm Policy Deadline Rejected

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30294, 21 November 1963, Page 15

E.E.C. Farm Policy Deadline Rejected

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BRUSSELS, November 20. The Belgian Foreign Minister (Mr Paul Henri Spaak) last night rejected President de Gaulle’s time-limit for the setting up of a Common Market agricultural policy, the British United Press reported.

“When France says she needs a common farm policy she is right When she says that all problems must be solved by the end of the year she is exaggerating,” he said at a dinner in Brussels. President de Gaulle said in July that if this time-limit was not met France would have to review the usefulness of the Common Market. This generally has been interpreted as an ultimatum to the community. Mr Spaak said the timelimit could not be met He said adoption of the Common Market’s farm regulations would have a bearing on consumer prices, on national budgets and on foreign trade. In Paris yesterday, the United States announced that it would seek a 50 per cent acrosa-the-bc rd cut in world tariffs in the "Kennedy round” trade talks in Paris next spring. The United States Undersecretary of State (Mr George Ball) addressing the

opening session of a two-diy meeting of the Council of Ministers of the 22-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, urged as few exceptions to this as possible. “The forthcoming trade negotiations are a serious test of the intentions of our Governments to promote free world trade,” he said. "A weak result om these negotiations would be no result at all. "If we simply skim off the top of the existing tariffs in Europe, North America and Japan, the world will regard these negotiations as a resounding failure,” he said. Mr Ball was critical of economic co-operation among Western countries during the last year. ‘'While substantial progress was made in some sreas in I terms of an objective apI praisal.” he said, "few would | say that the last 12 months have been a vintage year for Atlantic economic co-opera-I tion.”