E.E.C. RECOMMENDATION Commonwealth Trade Preference Would Go

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 1

E.E.C. RECOMMENDATION Commonwealth Trade Preference Would Go

(N.Z. Press Association-Copyright) LONDON, October 14. Britain will be pressed to scrap Commonwealth preferences in return for membership of the Common Market, if the member Governments accept the recommendations of the market’s executive commission.

This is stated in a 60-page report submitted to the market Governments just before the week-end and published by the commission last night.

A Belgian official said in Brussels last night: “Apart from the commission’s hard position on British preferential imports from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the commission’s recommendations are far better than we expected and they are in fact opening wide the community’s door to Britain.”

The official emphasised that every chapter of the commission’s document shows the desire to give the candidates for membership— Britain, Ireland, and Norway —time to adapt themselves to the closely-knit merger over a transition period allowing special safeguards. But on the Commonwealth, the commission is adamant that Britain’s adhesion to the Common Market customs tariffs will “fundamentally change the conditions of exchange between the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth through the substitution of Community preferences for Imperial preferences.”

Dairy Products The report notes that, apart from the problem of New

[ Zealand’s dairy products, the . British Government “has not stated the need for special ' solutions in favour of the I Commonwealth’s developed | countries.”’ The reason for this attitude [ by the British Government, 1 according to the commission, ■ was “above all, the fall-off in ; the relative importance of ex- , ports from these countries into the United Kingdom.” The commission says in its report that in 1938 exports to Britain represented 54.7 per cent of Australia’s over-all export—end they had dropped in 1967 to 12.7 per cent. N.Z. Figures The respective figures for New Zealand were 44.8 per cent in 1967 against 83.4 per cent in 1938; and, for Canada. 10.3 per cent, compared to 37.2 per cent in 1938. The report said that Britain will have to reorganise her nationalised steel industry and take steps to prevent Commonwealth immigrants flooding Common Market labour markets in order to get into the European Economic Community. She will also have to allow free movement of capital. The commission also said that Britain should agree to hand over her nuclear research secrets as a condition for entering the Common Market.