HC Deb 26 July 1976 vol 916 cc18-9W
Mr. Hooley

asked the Minister for Overseas Development if he will make a statement on the meeting of EEC Ministers concerned with overseas development held in Brussels on 14th-15th July 1976.

Mr. Judd

This was the first meeting of the ACP-EEC Council of Ministers established under the Lomé Convention. It was attended by delegations from 43 of the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries covered by the Convention and all the Nine member States of the Community and the European Commission. I headed the United Kingdom delegation.

The Council began by adopting rules of procedures for itself and for the ACPEEC Committee of Ambassadors, and adopting a decision to govern the delegation of powers to the Committee of Ambassadors. It went on to decide the composition and rules of operation for the Committee on Industrial Co-operation and the Centre for Industrial Development provided for in the Lomé Convention. On the trade provisions of the Lomé Convention, the Council adopted a decision to facilitate the entry of textiles from Mauritius into the Community.

There was frank discussion of certain problems of implementation, affecting both substance and consultation procedure, related principally to the trade provisions of the Convention. These included questions concerning imports of sugar, rum, beef, bananas and groundnuts into the Community, and the dispersal of surplus agricultural products from the Community. These matters will be further studied by the continuing machinery of the Convention and pro gress will be checked at a further meeting between the President of the ACP-EEC Council and the President of the Council of the Communities which is to take place in the autumn. As the aid provisions of the Lomé Convention have been in operation for less than 4 months, they gave rise to less discussion; but the ACP countries proposed some detailed amendments to the system for the stabilization of export earnings—Stabex—which will now be examined.

The meeting approved the accession of six new States to the Lomé Convention; these are Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde, Papua New Guinea, the Comoro State, Surinam and Seychelles.

The meeting took note of a proposal by the ACP States that the next meeting of the Joint Council should take place in Fiji.