Joint Statement following Discussions With the President of the European Economic Community.

THE PRESIDENT and Dr. Walter Hallstein, President of the Commission of the European Economic Community, have met at the White House today.

The President and Dr. Hallstein reviewed with satisfaction important developments of the past year, including the successful completion of the first stage of the Common Market. They agreed that the continuing evolution of a strong, closely knit European entity presents to statesmen of the West a historic opportunity to build an Atlantic Partnership founded on close cooperation between two equal partners.

While congratulating Dr. Hallstein on successful first steps toward establishment of a common agricultural policy and recognizing a common approach to agriculture as essential in the construction of an integrated Europe, the President emphasized the importance of agricultural exports to the trade of the United States and other free World countries, and repeated his expectation that the Community would take these factors into account. In this respect, the President referred to the special responsibility of the highly industrialized powers, such as the United States and the European Economic Community, to work for free and nondiscriminatory access to their markets for the products of developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Dr. Hallstein affirmed his sincere support for the President's trade program and for its objectives of reducing barriers to trade, on a non-discriminatory basis, between the two great trading units of the United States and the European Economic Community. The President and Dr. Hallstein agreed that a program of this nature promises to add great strength and cohesion to the West. Dr. Hallstein expressed the view that the President's trade program offers the basis for fruitful negotiation, in a spirit of genuine reciprocity, between the United States and the European Economic Community.