§ Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Minister of Overseas Development if she will seek to alter the situation whereby the poorest member States of the EEC pay higher percentage proportions of their gross national product into the European development fund than the richest members, as occurred in 1976 and 1977.
§ Mrs. HartI regret that this is not possible. The shares to be paid by each EEC member State to the fourth EDF were agreed in 1975 and are written into the internal financing agreement of the Lomé convention; there is no provision for their revision. But the Community 463W is now considering the possibility of charging the next EDF to the Community Budget. This should ensure that our share of the next EDF would be smaller than our present contribution. A detailed explanation of how this would be calculated is given in the Treasury Memorandum on the EDF and the EEC Budget, printed in volume 2 of the second report from the Select Committee on Overseas Development.