§ Mr. Horabinasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement about the agreements drawn up at the Conference on Tariffs and Trade recently concluded at Annecy.
§ Mr. H. WilsonThe chief matters dealt with at the Annecy Conference were three in number; first, a second round of multilateral tariff negotiations, following the first round held at Geneva in 1947: the102W object of this second round was to enable certain further countries to accede to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; secondly, a further Session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement, and, thirdly, certain matters arising out of the separate Agreement concluded at Geneva in September, 1948, regarding most-favoured-nation treatment for Western Germany.
As regards the tariff negotiations, Paper Cmd. 7792 reproduces the Annecy Protocol embodying the terms on which the newcomer countries (Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Finland, Greece, Haiti, Italy, Liberia, Nicaragua, Sweden and Uruguay) can accede to the General Agreement; it also describes the results of the tariff negotiations at Annecy, so far as the United Kingdom is concerned. I have made available in the Library copies of the consolidated Tariff Schedules (published by the United Nations) which embody the results of all the tariff negotiations concluded at the Conference. Certain supplementary explanations are given in an article in the "Board of Trade Journal" of 15th October. The procedure for approval of the accession to the General Agreement of the newcomer countries will not be completed till 30th November: accordingly it is not proposed to lay before the House till after 30th November the Orders implementing the United Kingdom tariff changes agreed at Annecy. A bilateral agreement signed between the United Kingdom and Denmark, consequential on the tariff agreement reached between the two countries at Annecy, is contained in Cmd. 7786.
As to the Third Session of the Contracting Parties, paper Cmd. 7791 sets out the various agreements and decisions reached by the Contracting Parties in the course of the Session. As regards Western Germany, a Declaration was made by the occupying Powers regarding the Western German tariff, and a Memorandum of Agreement was signed applying the 1948 most-favoured-nation Agreement to the Western sectors of Berlin. These documents have been published in Cmd. 7790