No joy seen for N.Z.

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32819, 20 January 1972, Page 2

No joy seen for N.Z.

The price for Britain’s final negotiating step into the E.E.C. offered no joy for New Zealand, said Mr W. E. Rowling, the Labour Party spokesman on overseas trade, yesterday.

“While it was champagne for the negotiators, the prospective fare for this country is likely to be much less heady,” Mr Rowling said. In agreeing to an explicit statement that continuing safeguards for New Zealand’s dairy products after the fiveyear transition period must be decided unanimously by the Ministers of the Ten, Britain had already significantly changed her stance since Luxemburg.

“ROCKY ROAD”

"If this is a sign of things to come, then we will have a rocky road to traverse after 1977. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development predicts the return of a European dairy surplus by 1975. "Should these predictions be well-founded, it is difficult to see how unanimity in the New Zealand case will be achieved within the enlarged Community when several of the member nations will hold the bulk of any such surplus,” Mr Rowling said. The comment by the British negotiator that it was implicit in the Luxemburg accord that the safeguards would continue beyond the transition period was "really just so many words.” It clearly had no standing * the specificallyit r

worded agreement on unanimity which was about to be signed.

“STEP BACK” “The British Conservative Government has taken one more step backward into Europe. New Zealand’s pri-

mary producers will for their part be well-advised to reappraise any other assurances brought back from Luxemburg last June," said Mr Rowling.