Q.
Prime Minister, the question of the common fisheries policy was obviously a major factor here at the European council. Do you not feel now that Denmark having such vital national interests to protect that it is not time for the nine to start giving a little, just a little to get an agreement?
A.
No, we all have vital interests to protect. We've all had to negotiate this agreement conscious that it will be in the interests of each and every country to get a fisheries agreement and it has been difficult for every one of the other nine, possibly with the exception of Luxembourg which doesn't have a particular interest, which has been difficult for many of us. We've reached the end of the road on concessions and Denmark has a very good and fair deal. She takes a colossal amount of fish for industrial purposes out of the seas. We take very little. We are at the end of the negotiating road and I believe that is the new factor which Denmark has to take into account.
Q
You say the proposals that are on the table, the package, is inviolate. If, between now and December 21 when fisheries ministers next meet, some more fish stocks could be found which would satisfy Denmark, are you prepared to negotiate about that? Some fish stocks outside the package?
A
There are no further negotiations on concessions at all. … . we're all standing by it. There are no further concessions on the package.
Q
The major factor in the council was the question of world trade. The major factor in the council was obviously the economic and social state in the Community and closely linked to that is the state of world trade. The council called for increased voluntary restraint agreements with countries like Japan and Korea. In order to take the pressure off European industries. Are you as a committed free trader not disturbed by this step down the road to protectionism?
A
First of all, we haven't got free trade. We've got a miscelaneous collection of barriers to trade—some of them are tariff barriers, some of them are non—tariff barriers. The newly industrialised countries have had special arrangements for years and the time for some of those special arrangements has come to go. Take Hong Kong for example, she exports quite a bit to us but she has an open market and we can export back. That is not true for a number of the other newly industrialised countries and what we have to do is to get down some of the barriers to trade. Now we're tackling it in two ways. First within the Community there are still a number of non-tariff barriers—we've known about them for years. We're going to have a concerted effort to get rid of those. Now with the outside world I don't know whether you've ever tried out an exercise-I've done it many times-of actually detailing the restraints to trade each and every country has. We've tried to get those down. What we simply cannot do in Britain is to operate an open market and have other people not operating open markets to us, and just as we agree that we should have as open a market as possible, so, because we agree that, we must fiercely fight the protective barriers operated by other people because they are the danger to an open market. The japanese will go on having a bigger and bigger balance of trade. They do not have open markets like ours. If they dont we have to retaliate the only way we can. One of the ways of doing it in the absence of Community action is to have voluntary restraint agreements, and I am the first to have something because yes, I do believe that if you're going to have free and fair trade you have to be free and fair both ways—at the present it isn't. [end p1]
Q
The question about the markets raises the question also of the relationship with the United States. The United States is particularly angry at the moment at the enclosed nature of the European agricultural market and the amount of subsidies paid by the Common Market to traders to export large surpluses of food onto the world market in competition, it must be said, with the United States. Are you not disturbed by this deterioration of relations with the United States on this question and how do you see that it is possible to ease the tension?
A
I think you will agree that every Western country has some protection to its agricultural produce because if it didn't it would virtually have a very unsuccessful agricultural industry as we took in certainly cheap food from the rest of the world—that we would have a very depressed agricultural industry, and that wouldn't be fair. So we all protect our agricultural industries in one way or another. In Europe we do it with a common agricultural policy … . I agree we produce far too many surpluses—that's not the structure of the Common Agricultural Policy itself but the level of prices of intervention and that can be dealt with. The United States also produces surpluses—just let's note in passing the problems of the Western free enterprise world are problems of surpluses of food, unlike the problems of the Communist world which are problems of gross and grave shortage. So we are fortunate we've at least got a surplus. There is a problem between the United States and Europe at the moment and we will have to talk it out between us. A lot of it would go if the surpluses in Europe were very much less and that is a question of the way in which the price structure is operated.
Q
You said earlier that we need vision in our relations with the us and you're asking for the Community to ask the us to have vision in its future relationships in order to prevent a slide down the road to protectionism. Do you think vision is really enough though, particularly on something like the Common Agricultural Policy? Do you not think that concessions have to be made somewhere along the line?
A
You're using the word vision in a particular way. You can have a number of disagreements within a family, within a community of nations, and you'll do everything you can to solve those. What you must never do is to damage the things which you have in common when those things are overriding. But what we and the us have in common—Europe, and the us, and places like Canada, the rest of the free world—is an abiding and enduring interest to protect our way of life, which is freedom with justice. To protect our people we have to stand together and although we have differences we must not let it affect our determination to stand together in defence of our way of life. So when you are talking about the smaller differences you must not let your vision be clouded. You must not let it affect that because we would be doing our peoples a great disservice if we did.