P.M.’s tour ‘rocking E.E.C. boat’

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33774, 21 February 1975, Page 3

P.M.’s tour ‘rocking E.E.C. boat’

(From

DAVID BARBER,

N.Z.P.A. staff correspondent.)

BONN, February 20.

The Prime Minister (Mr Rowling) will arrive in Paris tonight reasonably pleased with progress on his tour of Common Market capitals, but probably perturbed by the attitude of an influential Dutch member of the European Commission.

The Common Market’s Agriculture Commissioner (Mr Petrus Lardinios) cast a cloud over the Prime Minister’s tour by saying that New Zealand was not going the right way about getting a good deal from the E.E.C.

He told a British journalist in Brussels that New Zealand was making a mistake in allowing herself to become involved in Britain’s bid to renegotiate its E.E.C. membership terms. Mr Lardinois had talks with Mr Rowling in Brussels on Monday night. He spoke out after British press renorts highlighting the Prime Minister’s statement that Britain would press the E.E.C. for new long-term arrangements for New Zealand dairy produce.

Mr Rowling’s flying visit to Brussels, after talks in London, had raised suggestions in the Common Market capital of a British-New Zealand nlot, a Common Market iournalist, Richard NortonTaylor, of the “Guardian” said.

He said Mr Lardinois suggested that the move to include long-term safeguards for New Zealand dairy exports in the British renegotiation package was “rocking the boat.”

Mr Lardinois told Mr Norton-Taylor that detailed agreement for New Zealand trade after 1977 would “not be settled by March, not by April, not by June.” Mr Rowling said after his London talks that Britain was making the New Zealand case a firm part of its renegotiation nackaae to he nut to other Common Market members bv the E E.C. summit in Dublin on March 10. Now that Britain’s commitment to New Zealand’s case is out in the onen, the battle is beginning in earnest, the first skirmish probably coming in Paris. Exploration

The French have long been suspicious of the British renegotiation effort, and as determined protectors of the E.F.C.’s Common Agricultural Policy bitterly opposed to concessions for third-country primarv producers. Charles Cooper. London correspondent of “The Press,” reports that Mr Rowling scored a victory in West Germany on the way through the preliminaries of the fight for a better deal for dairy products.

| At a meeting yesterday between the Prime Minister (Mr Rowling) and the West German Denutv Chancellor (Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher), West Germany affirmed supnort in principle for New Zealand’s cause.

It was much more an exnloratory meeting than a definitive one, but the tenor from the start was one of West German appreciation of the deterioration of New Zea. land’s situation with regard to Protocol 18 and the need for a new look at all aspects of New Zealand’s claim for a fair trading arrangement whs agreed. Mr Genscher restated the

German position that Britain was essential to the viability of the Common Market. And he said that x his was now the opinion of France, too. This was confirmation that the major Europeans would lean far in Britain’s direction to help her over the selferected stile of a national referendum. i