655.5631/1
The Chargé in the Netherlands (Johnson) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 2.]
Sir: With reference to the last paragraph of my despatch No. 577 of the 16th instant, and to the Memorandum of the Press Conference which took place in the Department on March 26th in which the Secretary referred to “the question of the relation of an unconditional most-favored-nation treaty to a customs union”, I have the honor to report that I have been informed at the Foreign Office that the text of the commercial treaty between Holland and Belgium of 1863,10 together with the Protocol of 1865,11 amounted to the reciprocal granting of unconditional most-favored-nation treatment and that altho the customs union between Belgium and Luxemburg took place long after the negotiation of this treaty, the Dutch Government did not feel entitled in any way to protest against it on the ground of the violation of unconditional most-favored-nation clause.
In many Dutch treaties, including the treaty of 1925 with Germany, (Art. 2, Paragraph 2),12 a possible customs union is made a specific exception to the most-favored-nation clause. The government is, moreover, always ready to make such an exception in any treaty and feels that it has no moral right to protest against a customs union even though the exception has been omitted in a specific case. Thus [Page 583] while the existing commercial treaty between Holland and Austria does not contain the exception, the government feels that it has no grounds for a protest as it considers the exception is implied.
Dr. Nederbragt, the Chief of the Economic Section of the Foreign Office, has told me that he has discussed the above question with the Minister for Foreign Affairs in connection with the proposed Austrian-German customs union and that the attitude described above represented their joint opinion. He added that were it otherwise, Holland would make no protest because such action would be of no practical use.
The opinion of Mr. Beucker Andreae, the Chief of the Legal Section of the Foreign Office, coincides with those given above. Mr. Beucker Andreae, however, informs me that he has not had the opportunity to make a study of the matter and is not prepared as yet, therefore, to justify the Austrian-German action on purely legal grounds.
Respectfully yours,
- Convention of Commerce and Navigation, May 12, 1863, British and Foreign State Papers, vol. liii, p. 208.↩
- Traités de commerce et de navigation … entre la Belgique et les Pays Etrangers (3d ed., Braine-le-Comte, 1900), p. 288.↩
- Treaty of November 26, 1925, Additional to Treaty of December 31, 1851, League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. lvii, p. 155.↩