Reply to the 10th annual report of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 19 September 1970 (11th Sitting) (see Doc. 2802, report of the Committee on Economie Affairs and Development). Text adopted by the Assembly on 19 September 1970 (11th Sitting).
The Assembly :
1. Thanks the European Free Trade Association for the transmission of its l0th annual report ;
2. Warmly welcomes the accession of Iceland to the Association with effect from 1 March 1970 ;
3. Congratulates the Association and its associate member Finland on having successfully realised three years sooner than foreseen by the Stockholm Convention the bringing fully into being of an industrial free trade area ;
4. Conscious that experience of the abolition of tariffs and quotas in the Association has shown that non-tariff barriers to trade are of immensely greater extent and importance than has been supposed in the past, and that their elimination frequently raises highly complex problems ; furthermore noting that the pragmatic approach of EFTA to certain of thèse problems has led to solutions which could be of great value in an enlarged European Community, is convinced that in any such enlargement the Communities should draw fully on EFTA experience in those fields where a different approach by EFTA to that hitherto adopted in the Communities to the identical problem or problems would appear to have given proof of its success ;
5. Calls on EFTA to re-examine in a more realistic light than hitherto the question of permissible government aids to industry in the context of regional economic development policies ; and, bearing in mind the relevance and urgency of such examination, whether in the end an early enlargement of the European Communities is realised or not, would profoundly regret any attempt to postpone renewed consideration of this thorny question on the pretence that it should await the outcome of the present negotiations for enlargement ;
6. Declares its firm conviction that, in the context of the enlargement of the European Communities, solutions must be found to avoid the re-erection of tariff barriers to intra-European trade where these have been once abolished.
