Regional fund sticks E.E.C.

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 17

Regional fund sticks E.E.C.

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter— Copyright) BRUSSELS, January’ 31. Common Market Ministers failed early today to decide on the size of the European Economic Community’s regional development fund—the main hurdle to progress on economic, monetary, and energy problems.

This was the third Council of Foreign Ministers to founder over the same problem. The ministers are to meet again on February 18 to consider new Commission proposals to be prepared on the basis of secret Commission talks last night with each delegation and a closed ministerial session. The current council president, the West German Foreign Minister (Mr Walter Scheel) told reporters: “The council has a regional fund fixation at the moment. The log jam must be broken.”

“Once we have got the fund out of the way, many other things will become possible again,” he added.

Mr Scheel held out a certain hope for a final decision at the next meeting and yesterday’s discussions had made clearer “the path which we should take to reach a solution.”

“The sense of impasse is no longer there,” he said. The compromise proposal would suggest a smaller fund than the 2250 million units of account (SNZI6B7 million) over three years originally recommended by the Commission, Mr Scheel said. The fund is designed to channel development capital to the Community’s poorest regions which include large! areas of Britain, Ireland, and Italy.

Commission sources said that most ministers were not ready to accept anything less than a total fund of about 1700 million u.a. (SNZI27S million). This figure is 300 million u.a. higher than the final offer made by Germany, which would be by far the biggest donor.

A smaller fund could mean i that the recipient countries! might have to take cuts in) what they can expect from; the fund. The regional policy commissioner, Mr George I

Thomson, will tour E.E.C. capitals before the next meeting to try to find the consensus necessary for him to work out acceptable compromise proposals. If the ministers agree on February 18, they will have missed the deadline set for the fund’s creation by a summit meeting of E.E.C. leaders in 1972 by almost seven weeks.