Australian Embassy, Paris, 29 January 1971
467. Confidential
Britain and the EEC
When I saw Brunet1 28th January, I also had a go at him about Lipkowski’s remarks in Australia of the consequences for us of Britain’s entry into the EEC.2
2. I got no change on this at all and I suspect that […] Brunet himself had briefed Lipkowski.
3. Brunet merely repeated what Lipkowski had said and produced figures to show that the creation of the EEC had led to an increase in trade with third countries and in world trade as a whole. Brunet would not agree with my rejoinder that this could have happened anyway.
4. He also said (and this is something I have never heard a Frenchman say so directly before) that the EEC could simply not be expected to respond to pleas of the damage which would be caused by Britain’s entry to particular rural communities in third countries: the field was just too vast and it was up to third countries to re-structure their economies, if necessary, as the Six themselves were doing. Luckily, Australia now seemed to have the resources to do this.
5. While all that follows is probably obvious to you, I have the feeling as I talk to more and more Frenchmen on this subject that we are getting nowhere and are not going to get anywhere with our present tactics. Even Lipkowski, who was sympathetic to Mr Nixon’s3 presentation, has now proved a disappointment and his previous sympathy appears to have been no more than a courtesy from a man shortly to be the guest of the Commonwealth. With both the British and the French unhelpful, we have little reason to expect anything different from the other members of the Six.
6. While trade policy is not my field, I suggest therefore that we may have to address ourselves to looking for other means, such as there may be, to preserve our interests. Roughly speaking, our tactics so far are to say: ‘Look at the damage British entry is going to do to us. You must do something about this. What is it?’ The answer we are getting here in Paris and, I gather, in Britain is: ‘We recognize your plight but so what. The baby is yours and you are big enough to carry it’.
7. While I do not at all recommend for consideration that these tactics be dropped, I feel that we must among ourselves recognize that they are not going to succeed and we should be thinking about what we can in future do in addition. Eventual recourse to GATT is one answer and may be useful but that is a tactic which does not scare the French and, I presume, the EEC as a whole.
Co-operation with others in a similar plight (e.g., with the US) is another and also may be useful but we may encounter a situation where everyone is out for himself. Another possibility, which I hope you are examining, is that we see what cards we hold as regards trade with the EEC as it is now composed and as it is likely to be composed with a view to later discussions with it jointly and possibly severally, taking into account that the GATT era of world trade may be coming to an end (if it has not come to an end already) and we should seek to accommodate ourselves, if it proves necessary, to this new situation.
The dispute over a transitional period for Australian rural industries
In April–May of 1971, the British negotiating team had come to recognise that their pledge to secure a transitional period for Australian industries could only be partially secured. Favourable arrangements were obtained for key raw materials such as lead and aluminium, but the same could not be said of agricultural items which fell within the ambit of the Common Agricultural Policy, where the Six insisted on Britain’s full adhesion to the Community levy system from the day of accession. As the CAP incorporated key commodities at risk for Australia such as butter and sugar, this issue was bound to become a bone of contention. Although the British secured a general declaration from the Six of their willingness to address any sudden diversion of trade from ‘third country suppliers’, this was unlikely to satisfy Australian expectations that a transitional period would be obtained to cushion the blow of British entry. Indeed this undertaking was regarded as virtually worthless by the Australian Government.
Thus the final phase of Britain’s entry negotiations from April to July of 1971 was particularly bruising from an Anglo-Australian point of view. The dispute which emerged was essentially twofold—first, over whether the British had fulfilled their pledge to secure adequate transitional arrangements for Australian rural industries; and, second, over whether Australia had been consulted on the decision to accept the terms of the CAP immediately upon joining the EEC. The documents in this section trace the key moments in this dispute as it unfolded, starting with the UK briefings of Commonwealth representatives at the negotiating sessions of April and May 1971, and moving on to the arrival in Europe of McEwen’s successor as Minister for Trade and Industry, Doug Anthony, in June. It was only during Anthony’s visit that the extent of Australian displeasure with the emerging terms of entry became known. Anthony frankly accused his British counterparts of failing to honour their word, and of treating Australia ‘like any other third country ’—charges which were openly resented by Rippon (Document 288). Anthony issued a series of public statements in Britain and Europe that were reminiscent of McEwen’s in 1961–62. With the successful completion of the Luxembourg negotiations on 23 June 1971, he declared bluntly that ‘Britain had failed to keep its promise to Australia’ (Documents 290 and 291 ). The post-mortem on this episode on both sides suggests that Rippon had indeed concealed British negotiating tactics on the question of a transitional period until it was too late for the Australians to protest—such was the British determination that they should not fail a third time (Documents 297, 298, 299, 300). In reply to a letter of protest from McMahon, Heath made it abundantly clear that Australian interests could no longer have any special claim on British sympathies (Document 292).
1 Jean-Pierre Brunet, Director of Economic Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay.
2 Document 275.
3 Peter J. Nixon, Australian Minister for the Interior.
[NAA: Al838, 727/4/2 PART 15]