Brussels, 26 April 1962
Statement on Behalf of Australia to the Committee of Deputies of the United Kingdom/EEC Conference1
Introduction
First of all, I wish to express to you and your Ministers the Australian Government’s appreciation of your invitation to address you. This enables us to supplement what our British friends have been saying and will in future be saying, by explaining directly and in our own way, the rights and benefits we now have in the United Kingdom and the vital issues at stake for Australia in the negotiations in which you are engaged, and by offering some suggestions on how we think our interests can best be preserved if the United Kingdom should join with you in the Community.
We know that our request to put our views to you directly in the course of your negotiations may have caused you some embarrassment. We are grateful that, on balance, you have felt the practical advantages of our doing this outweigh the disadvantages. Your invitation to address you today is appreciated all the more because we know it was extended only with considerable difficulty.
Your time is valuable. For this reason you will not think me lacking in courtesy if I say no more than this of your willingness to hear the views of Australia—a country as European as Europe in many ways, but at the other end of the world from Europe.
In the past nine months, we have presented several Aide Memoires to your Governments setting out the reasons why the Australian Government has felt its views should be considered in the context of the United Kingdom’s application to join the Community. They have portrayed the Australian people as one which, by origin, culture and purpose is unmistakably aligned with Europe and the Western World, and which has demonstrated its willingness to make common cause in matters of concern to the Western World.
Australia is a remote and, geographically, a lonely country set on the fringe of a turbulent Asia. The Government feels a deep responsibility to secure the future of our European population by developing our country to its full potential—which we think is very great—as quickly as this can be done. This imposes a heavy responsibility on a people of less than eleven millions, occupying a continent four times as big as the whole of the Common Market area and having to bear the additional responsibility of looking after the interests of large dependent areas in New Guinea, and other places, under United Nations Trusteeship.
It is against this background—of a rapidly developing country remote in distance from Europe but nevertheless European in outlook and association and a not inconsiderable trading partner—that we believe the Member States of the Community should assess the significance and importance of Australia. That we should continue to develop on sound lines and thereby to grow in strength is, we believe, not a concern of ours alone. Nor is it a concern of Britain alone. In our view it is, or should be, an important concern also of the older and stronger Western Powers with which we are aligned and with whom we trade.
The Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, Mr McEwen, has recently visited your capital cities to explain, at first hand and at the highest political level, the fundamental nature of Australia’s historical and contractual relationships with the United Kingdom, the problems her application for membership of the Community poses for Australia, and the Australian Government’s belief that arrangements to overcome these problems can be worked out which will accommodate the reasonable needs, interests and expectations of all interested parties.
It is my task, as it were, to fill in the detail of the picture Mr McEwen painted and, in particular, to elaborate, in as specific terms as possible at this stage and in the short time at my disposal, our ideas on how our interests could be accommodated if the United Kingdom decided to join the Community.
The United Kingdom is, of course, one of the principals in these negotiations and has the formal responsibility of seeking the kind of arrangements which would be needed, if she were to be accepted into the Community, to protect the interests, rights and benefits Australia has in her market and which it is vital—so far as we are concerned—to preserve.
We have worked, and will continue to work, very closely with the United Kingdom in the formulation of proposals for special arrangements of the type which Mr Heath said in Paris would be necessary to protect the vital interests of Commonwealth countries. We have assisted the United Kingdom in her task of establishing a case for seeking these special arrangements and, in those cases where Community policy is sufficiently well known to enable precision to be reached, we have discussed the details between us.
We are firmly convinced—and the British, who have supported our approach to you for this opportunity to place our views before you, share our conviction—that real advantage can come from this work we have been doing together to her own presentation of her problems, to the Six’s appreciation of them, and to the reaching of a satisfactory outcome which will preserve our position in her market.
In order to explain why the Australian Government has taken the view that the economic consequences for Australia of United Kingdom entry into the Community could be most serious unless special arrangements were made to safeguard our interests, I will need to sketch briefly a few salient points. This will also help to give some perspective to what I shall be saying later.
Despite her small population, Australia plays a big part in world trade and is very heavily dependent on it. About 44 per cent of our exports go to the United Kingdom and the EEC countries combined, while 46 per cent of our imports come from these seven countries. In other words, 45 per cent of our world trade is conducted with your seven countries. We rank fifth among the export markets of the seven countries combined. It has been our experience—the common experience of developing countries—that as we industrialise and build up new industries, our import requirements grow rather than shrink. Thus we represent, now and potentially, a very significant market for the industrial products of Europe.
But our potential economic growth and our capacity to import, like those of all countries, are linked directly with our ability to export. 80 per cent of our current exports to the world comprise a limited range of raw or semi–processed materials and agricultural products-mostly temperate foodstuffs-many of the type produced within the present and prospective Common Market area. The balance consists of manufactures (and semi-processed goods) which, mainly because of existing preferences, have found and held small export markets despite disabilities flowing from producing primarily for a small domestic market.
What is ‘at risk’ for Australia
On the basis of our average exports to Britain in the past few years, trade valued at about $370 million would be ‘at risk’ in one way or another if the United Kingdom joined the EEC, and if the Common Agricultural Policy (so far as we know it) and the Common External Tariff were applied without qualification to our trade. This trade, which I have described as being ‘at risk’, comprises all our export items with the exception of wool and a very few other basic raw materials on which the Common External Tariff is intended to be free. This $370 million represents 70 per cent of our exports to the United Kingdom and nearly 20 per cent of our total exports to all countries. But its significance is far greater than these figures would show since our trade ‘at risk’ represents some 45 per cent of our total exports to the world of the wide range of commodities the trade in which I have described as being ‘at risk’—that is, for which the conditions of entry into our major market would face changes—in some cases drastic changes—if the United Kingdom should join the Community without some special arrangements. As I will demonstrate later, for many of these commodities which are so critically dependent on the United Kingdom market for their major outlet, there are very few, if any, alternative markets to which we might turn in compensation for any losses sustained in the United Kingdom.
Australia’s Interest in the Negotiations
Australia’s interest in these negotiations derives from her position as a third country to whom the United Kingdom has obligations resulting from long history and conventions concluded prior to the entry into force of the Treaty of Rome.
Speaking as a representative of one Commonwealth country, I can well imagine the difficulty the Six may have in comprehending just what constitutes the ‘rights and obligations’ which exist between ourselves and the United Kingdom and their status. Indeed, the diversity—both in form and nature—of intra-Commonwealth relations is a curious and complex thing. As difficult to explain, in many respects, as it is to comprehend.
The United Kingdom has said she cannot become a Member of the Community unless the important trade interests in her market of Commonwealth countries are safeguarded. In her negotiations she is seeking arrangements which will permit her to discharge her obligations to the Commonwealth as she conceives them.
Whether her requests in relation to the Commonwealth countries are reasonable and compatible with her membership of the Community is for the Community itself to decide, but I would hope today to contribute towards a decision by supplementing what the United Kingdom has put, or will be putting, to the Member States about the nature of our trading relationships, what our trading interests are and how our interest could be protected.
Some Relevant Provisions of the Rome Treaty
The Rome Treaty recognises, for example in Article 234, that a country wishing to join the Community may have prior obligations to third countries resulting from conventions concluded prior to membership.
This Article says, in effect,
- that prior obligations to third countries resulting from conventions shall not be affected by the provisions of the Treaty in so far as the obligations of such conventions are not incompatible with the Treaty, and
- in so far as such obligations are incompatible, the incompatibility must be eliminated and Member States will co-operate to achieve this purpose.
It seems necessary, therefore, for the Community, in looking at the request of the United Kingdom to be permitted arrangements which will satisfactorily discharge her obligations to Australia, to be assured that the nature of these obligations is within the meaning of Article 234. Specifically, to be satisfied that these Australian rights result from convention.
The Australian trading rights in the United Kingdom market that Britain and ourselves wish to preserve can be loosely described as the ‘preference rights’ of various kinds which have developed from a long and close association between our two countries. Australia has progressed through all the stages from a collection of separate British colonies, then to six Separate States, and finally to an independent nation. Our commercial relationship has reflected this progress.
[ matter omitted ]2
I trust that this brief outline will demonstrate that the historically-based contractual arrangements between the United Kingdom and Australia give Australia rights in the United Kingdom market—rights which she has said she must protect—which fall within the meaning of Article 234 of the Rome Treaty, as ‘rights and obligations resulting from conventions concluded prior to the entry into force of the Rome Treaty.’
This being so, the Australian Government believes that it is entirely reasonable for the United Kingdom to have accepted the obligation of seeking from the Six effective means of ensuring that the occasion of her entry into the Community should not, perforce, put her in a position of not being able to continue her obligations to us—unless, of course, these obligations, upon examination, turned out to be incompatible with the Rome Treaty.
Of course, whether or not the United Kingdom’s application for Community membership is accepted is not a question on which we feel we should offer any views. However, to remove any misunderstanding, I wish to make it plain that we have no wish to use our contractual rights with the United Kingdom to make her joining difficult, or to complicate her negotiations with the Six. As our Government has made very clear on a number of occasions, we place great store on the benefits to the Free World which could flow from the enhancement of the economic and political strength and cohesion of Europe. We want to do all we can, commensurate with our own minimum economic needs, to facilitate a satisfactory outcome to the United Kingdom’s negotiations with the Community.
This, then, brings me back to Article 234 of the Rome Treaty and the question of whether or not the rights and obligations I have outlined are compatible with the Rome Treaty and, if not, what steps would need to be taken to eliminate any incompatibility which may be found to exist.
What Criteria Must Arrangements Satisfy to be Compatible with the Letter or the Spirit of the Rome Treaty?
To answer this question, we have very seriously examined the Rome Treaty—its text, its spirit, its objectives, its machinery, its institutions, and the accompanying arrangements—to see what criteria the preservation of our trading rights with the United Kingdom would need to meet to satisfy it.
As we see it, there are a number of main criteria which, generally speaking, any arrangements which we and the United Kingdom might seek to enable her to continue to discharge her obligations to us, should satisfy. I shall refer to them briefly in turn.
1. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or the spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not require the maintenance of customs frontiers between the United Kingdom and Member States.
This, of course, is essential to the concept of any Customs Union or Free Trade Area. An arrangement which failed to comply with this would put up a road block against the achievement of a ‘community’ in many fundamental ways.
2. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or the spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not prevent the adoption of a Common External Tariff.
We in Australia have some relevant practical experience. Sixty years ago we also were six separate sovereign States. Our grandfathers, in their wisdom, decided we must be a community in the true sense and, in deciding this, they saw the need to have a common tariff around all the States. We not only removed customs and other trading barriers between our Six States, as you are doing, but also erected a common tariff structure around our six States which became one economic community.
Of course the existence of a common external tariff has not prevented us from using, as a Commonwealth—but in the interests of any local industry or State—some tariff or equivalent measure which any State could have used individually. The Six, I take it, could no more tolerate the necessity for, or the permanent maintenance of, a separate United Kingdom tariff (or a separate United Kingdom column in the Common External Tariff) than Australia could have tolerated a separate State tariff within her own boundary.
3. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not prevent the harmonisation of prices in the United Kingdom and the Member States.
We accept the fact that the very basis of an economic community requires, subject only to internal geography and local conditions, that prices must come together for both social and economic reasons.
4. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or the spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not give to the United Kingdom any important cost advantage.
Membership of the Community gives different advantages and disadvantages to individual Members but it seems to us that it is implicit in the Rome Treaty that, given only the natural advantages which each member State might possess, each State looks for a balance of advantage for itself. Any arrangements which gave to one member any important benefit in respect of its costs deriving from her previous obligations—such as the United Kingdom’s obligations to Australia—might tend to destroy the balance of advantage within the Community and interfere with the equality of opportunity and the development of that balance of advantage within the Community which each member has the right to expect.
5. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not frustrate the desired level of protection of industries within the Common Market.
The primary purpose of the Common External Tariff, or other arrangements to regulate external trade, is to provide the desired level of protection to Community industry. We recognise that any arrangement which safeguarded Australia’s rights in respect of the United Kingdom market but threatened thereby to damage a Community industry—in the United Kingdom or elsewhere—could not be accepted.
6. Arrangements, to be compatible with the letter or the spirit of the Rome Treaty, should not frustrate the reasonable expectations other Member States might have of gains in the United Kingdom market.
Australia’s preference arrangements have traditionally rested on the broad principle that her interests in the United Kingdom market came second only to those of United Kingdom domestic industry but ahead of third countries’ interests.
Any arrangements by which the United Kingdom sought to preserve our rights and benefits in the situation where she became part of the Community would have to place our rights second to the total Community’s domestic rights and interests.
And so I have set down the criteria which it seems to us any proposed arrangements for safeguarding our traditional rights must meet if, in terms of Article 234, they are to be compatible with the Rome Treaty.
Further Criteria
In addition, any arrangements would need especially to take into account the reasonable needs of United Kingdom industries for protection in the new circumstances which her entry into the Community would bring about and where, for example, traditional forms of protection by subsidies may have to be changed.
But there is another set of criteria which such arrangements would have to meet. These relate to the need for all arrangements to have regard not only to the rights and expectations of the United Kingdom itself, but also to the rights of ‘third countries’. These rights are expressed in the GATT. Of course the principal one is the assurance, provided for in the General Agreement, that third countries have—that there shall be no increase in preferences beyond the level of those existing in 1947.
However the GATT, which sets out rules governing the formation of Customs Unions, also envisages the possibility that in this event a Member may bring its preference obligations with it into the ambit of the Customs Union.
Paragraph 9 of Article XXIV expressly provides that:–
‘The preferences referred to in paragraph 2 of Article l (and these clearly include those Australia enjoys in the United Kingdom market) shall not be affected by the formation of a customs union.’
The Article in question goes on to say that such preferences can be eliminated or adjusted by means of negotiations with contracting parties affected. This is the normal basis of altering either preferences or any other tariffs and involves the concept of alteration only through mutually advantageous arrangements between the contracting parties concerned.
Now I am aware that there is one very important third country which, although one of Australia’s best friends, has chosen to let it be known that the maintenance of preference obligations by a member joining a Customs Union should not be permitted. This country appears to be enunciating some lofty principle not in accordance with GATT, as we understand it, but very much in accord with her own self-interest.
Apart from the fact that this country would stand to pick up major benefits should the United Kingdom not be enabled to maintain its preference obligations with Australia, we in Australia cannot see that either the Rome Treaty or the GATT would require that the United Kingdom’s application for membership of the Community should force her into the position of choosing between abandoning her obligations to us or joining the Common Market.
Clearly, third countries’ ‘rights’ under the GATT need not be impaired by arrangements whereby our rights in the United Kingdom were preserved unless the provisions of the GATT in relation to such rights were offended in the process. Put another way, if arrangements were made to preserve the trade benefits we derive from our rights in the United Kingdom market, and if such arrangements did not infringe the rights of third countries under the GATT, then it could not be said that third countries had been disadvantaged by these arrangements.
In any event, this argument would surely need to be settled through the processes of the GATT itself, where we are principals and have a direct voice, and where third countries can speak at the conference table and not in the corridors.
I hope I have set down all the important criteria in both the Rome Treaty and the GATT with which any arrangements to protect Australia’s trade benefits, derived from rights in the United Kingdom market, must comply. If! have omitted any, I would like to be informed so that I can add them to the list.
Given these criteria, the consideration of what arrangements might be advanced by the United Kingdom to protect our interests becomes a little easier.
If the United Kingdom were to propose arrangements to protect our rights which satisfied all those criteria (and any others of which I may be informed), then it seems to us that the United Kingdom would not be asking for more than the Six could accede to in terms of Article 234. Of course, in line with what I have said earlier, I am not venturing in any way to put a view on whether the EEC Member States should not accept the United Kingdom’s application, or her requests for arrangements to continue to carry out her obligations to us. We have a very clear appreciation that these are matters of high policy for the Member States alone to decide.
I am putting it to you, however, that we would feel ourselves unreasonable and guilty of asking for the impossible if we were to press the United Kingdom to seek arrangements which could not reasonably satisfy the criteria which I have outlined. We, for our part, have not done this and will not do so.
Given the ability to contrive arrangements which will satisfy those criteria; given that the Member States wish to accept the United Kingdom into membership; given a genuine willingness to examine her request to carry out her obligations to Australia in harmony with the provisions of Article 234; and given—as Mr. McEwen has been assured by political leaders in the capitals of the Six—that real importance is attached to avoiding unnecessary damage to the whole basis of our trading development and our viability, our economic well-being and future growth, and our security and stability; given all these things—then we believe that the strengthening and greater cohesion of Europe will be able to go ahead without a corresponding (and perhaps greater) weakening of other countries like Australia whose growth and well-being is important in the Free World.
A General Formula or Framework
In looking for arrangements which would safeguard our interests and be compatible with the Rome Treaty and the GATT, we believe a general formula or framework is possible for application to the many commodities which make up our trade and is desirable to give both that consistency of approach and the degree of simplicity which is essential.
Broadly speaking, the rights we see ourselves as having in the British market—the rights for which the United Kingdom would be seeking protection, subject to the criteria I have referred to—are for continued access in accordance with the terms and conditions of the convention we have with the British, but limited to the extent necessary to comply with the Rome Treaty. The continuation of these rights, however contrived, would of course have to comply with the provisions of the GATT—including the ‘no-new-preference’ rule.
Basically, what we are concerned to preserve for our trade is a preferred position over third countries equivalent to that we have enjoyed in the United Kingdom market as the result of our convention arrangements.
We must accept that, if the United Kingdom joined the Community, we could no longer maintain our preferred position over Community Members. Its continuation would be incompatible with the Rome Treaty and would cut across a number of the other criteria I have outlined as necessary for any reasonable arrangements to fulfil.
But need this affect the preferred position vis-a-vis third countries which we at present hold in respect of our exports to the British market?
When the Community market has subsumed the British market, and the two are one, the mere extension of our preferred position to the Community market could be argued to be an extension of the coverage or scope of our preferences rights, and thus a breach of the no-new-preference rule of the GATT. In the light of Article XXIV:9 of the GATT it might be possible to argue this but nevertheless we shall not do so.
Therefore, in the suggestions the United Kingdom has been and will be putting forward about arrangements to protect our trade, we will not be asking them to ensure that the preference we now have on any commodity when imported into the United Kingdom should continue to apply without restriction or limitation to that same commodity when imported into the Community as a whole.
We have been co-operating with our British friends in looking for proposals within a general framework which would give us, in respect of third countries, a continuance of our preferred position against these countries without involving any increase or decrease in either the coverage or the level of the present preferred position.
We believe that proposals which limited our preference in the Community Market to the existing preference we enjoy, but applying only to a limited quantum of goods, would not breach the GATT in any way, provided the quantum to which the preference applied was demonstrably comparable to the quantum of goods we could reasonably have expected to sell into the United Kingdom market had she not entered the Common Market.
In other words, we submit a principle, capable of general application, that the device of preference tariff quotas—with the quota related to what might be terrned ‘comparable outlets’ with those to which the preference related prior to the United Kingdom joining the Common Market—is not a contravention of the GATT, is an equitable and conservative way of preserving our rights, and should be regarded by the Six as something which in terrns of Article 234 they should facilitate except where it can be shown to bring a result incompatible with the Rome Treaty and the other criteria I have outlined.
The principle of using the ‘comparable outlets’ concept as a measuring rod in arriving at what arrangements would adequately safeguard our interests was first introduced by Mr Heath in his Paris Statement. Since that time, we understand from the British Delegation they have developed the pattern of their thinking on temperate foodstuffs around this approach.
We, for our part, in what I shall be putting forward to you and in our consultations with the British, have taken this same principle as a most suitable one to adopt not only for the great bulk commodities covered by the Common Agricultural Policy but also for those commodity items covered by the Common External Tariff.
Indeed, the detail of our discussions today should go along way, so far as Australia is concerned, towards putting meaning into this phrase which, until applied in some actual commodity solution, can mean ‘all things to all men’.
There is one point on the concept of ‘comparable outlets’ on which clarification is needed before we proceed to canvass the detail of possible solutions.
We would suggest, as have the British Delegation in their talks with us, that it would not adequately meet their concept of ‘comparable outlets’ if a quantum, once fixed by reference to this concept, was never capable of adjustment to take into account the growth factor in the traditional outlets enjoyed in the United Kingdom market and from which the quantum was first drawn.
They have suggested—and we wish to emphasise the importance we attach to this—that at suitable intervals the Community might review how the principle of ‘comparable outlets’ was working in practice, after consultation with the Commonwealth country concerned, to see what modifications might be required to ensure that it reflects the changes in the market since it was first applied for the purposes of a special arrangement. The times for any such reviews need not be specifically laid down and in any case would probably be only infrequently needed.
Whether or not preference quotas limited to sealed off quantities (comparable outlets) do in fact meet the criteria of the Rome Treaty can be considered in relation to the rights we hold in individual items of trade. To the extent that preference quotas would be inadequate—for technical reasons—or unsuitable because they would conflict with the criteria of the Rome Treaty, or would be inferior to other arrangements designed to achieve the same results, then it will be necessary to look for modifications to them or for completely different devices.
[ matter omitted ]
Conclusion
This concludes what I want to say about the arrangements which we see as being necessary to protect our interests if the United Kingdom should join the Community.
Our objectives are simple. And to our minds, the means we have put forward to achieve them are simple—at least in concept.
Our objectives are:–
–to ensure arrangements which will keep to a minimum the damage to our trade which would be likely to arise from our loss of contractual free entry into the United Kingdom market should she join the Common Market and adopt its Common External Tariffs and its Common Agricultural Policies;
–to secure arrangements which, in line with Article 234 of the Rome Treaty, will perrnit the United Kingdom to honour her obligations to us in accordance with the spirit and letter of the Convention she has with us, and to the extent not incompatible with either the Rome Treaty or the rights and interests of third countries as expressed in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade;
–to obtain arrangements which will perrnit us to retain the degree of preferred position—but no more than this—which we now enjoy in the British market against non Member States of the European Economic Community.
As you will have seen from what I have said, our interests are diverse, but even though the form of the arrangements may vary as between products, I have made it clear that each of our interests which we are seeking to safeguard in the United Kingdom markets is covered by contractual arrangements with the United Kingdom.
These contractual arrangements have a long history and there has been nothing to suggest that they would not continue. This is why, in the product by product examination which I have made, while I have not lost sight of the special problems of the transitional period, I have said nothing about any limitation in time to the kinds of arrangements which we have in mind. Because of the attention we have given to the need to avoid arrangements which in any way would cut across the United Kingdom subscribing to a Common External Tariff or a Common Agricultural Policy, we are confident that the kind of suggestions we have made are compatible with their indefinite continuance. It would not be enough—and the British Delegation recognises our views on this matter—for any arrangements designed to protect our trade interests to be limited simply to a short transitional period.
In his recent talks with political leaders, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Mr McEwen, laid particular emphasis on the need to avoid what he called the ‘precipice solution’—which would be no solution at all. Our producers and exporters are entitled to the same reasonable expectation of the indefinite continuance of their preferred rights and benefits in the United Kingdom market as the history of our trade relations and the circumstances of our contractual arrangements has always suggested.
We have, for our own protection, tried to make our approach comprehensive since every item of our trade, no matter how small, is important to a developing country like Australia and certainly to our producers, our exporters and even to our security—through growth.
We have tried to be consistent in our approach for the sake of simplicity and also of comprehension.
And we have tried, above all, to be reasonable in our approach by confining our thinking on the nature of the arrangements needed to protect our trade to the limits of certain criteria which take into account the realities of the situation which confronts us, including the reasonable expectations and the rights of others.
We have not made any idle proposals, merely for the sake of the record or for any other reasons. What we have put forward, we believe to be practical and attainable. We have not sought to maintain any part of our present rights and benefits which we recognise Britain could not reasonably seek to obtain should she join the Community. This will undoubtedly mean quite serious trade losses for us but we must accept this.
In the light of our reasonable approach and the principles which have guided us, we see no reason why we should lose any more than this. Nor do we believe that when you have had time to study what I have said in justification of our approach, any of you would insist that it would be reasonable for us to do so.
We believe that the Community’s recognition in Article 234 of the Rome Treaty that prior obligations of members shall not be affected by Community membership will be translated into arrangements to allow the United Kingdom to maintain her obligations to us where these can be shown, as I have tried today to show, to be compatible with the Treaty. I recall some years ago in the GATT in reply to a series of written questions on the Treaty submitted by third countries, the Community gave the opinion that it was highly improbable that any difficulties which might arise under Article 234 could not be overcome. I am sure the same spirit prevails today.
I have tried today to outline our thinking to you in sufficient detail for you to be able to grasp its main outline. What I have said about individual commodities has been said mainly to give sufficient elaboration to show that the facts conform reasonably well with the suggestion I have been making.
As I indicated earlier, the kind of ground I have covered is so comprehensive and the suggestions I have canvassed so important that I do not expect—indeed, I would be surprised—if you were in a position at this stage to offer any more than passing comment.
The British Delegation, when the time is appropriate, will no doubt elaborate on the thinking that I have put forward. We shall keep in close consultation with them, as in the past. I would expect that your own experts, and particularly the experts of the Commission itself, will want to examine in some detail many of the suggestions that I have made. I would hope that none of them would be dismissed lightly. On the other hand, it seems to me that from a purely practical point of view, a great many questions may well emerge on which you might wish to seek further information and elaboration in discussion with us. As Mr McEwen has made plain, we stand ready at any time, and would welcome the opportunity, for our commodity experts to sit down with yours in a purely informal way in a joint endeavour to find solutions to what are the tremendously complicated problems involved in the absorption of the United Kingdom, with its vast trading interests and its own peculiar pattern of supply and demand, into the Common Market.
Sir Edwin McCarthy, who is accredited as our Ambassador to the Commission, will keep in touch, as will our representatives in your capitals, to see whether we can be of further assistance.
Thank you, Gentlemen, for your courtesy and for your patient hearing. I hope that what I have had to say will be useful from your point of view as well as from the point of view of ourselves and the United Kingdom.
1 This occasion represented the upshot of months of Australian lobbying in Britain and Europe for the right to participate directly in the negotiations. Despite the Australian expectation that it represented the first of several opportunities to put their case where relevant, it was to be their only appearance at the negotiating table, and there is little evidence that it had much influence on the outcome. The full statement runs to several hundred pages, with detailed commodity notes and solutions relating to specific items of trade. This extract documents the general outlines and principles that the Australians hoped the negotiators might adopt.
2 Westerman provided here a short history of the Commonwealth preference system and
[NAA: A 10206, EHEC2]