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THE COMMITTEE lobbying for Britain to be the site for the new European
Community Trademarks Office is worried. Britain has recently secured the
new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and some believe this
may jeopardise Britain’s chances of securing the CTMO.

‘This has created the impression,’ says the lobby leader Iain Mills
MP, ‘that any hopes of winning the CTMO are now unrealistic.’

‘But fortunately,’ he adds, ‘one of the few people who does not subscribe
to this rather pessimistic view is the Prime Minister.’ Mills says that
when he spoke to Margaret Thatcher recently she made it ‘absolutely clear
that she had by no means given up the fight for the CTMO’.

The CTMO lobby argues that the Development Bank is an initiative by
40 countries and thus not a truly European institution. So, Britain is still
entitled to a genuine European bureaucracy all of its own, and the trademarks
office remains an ideal candidate.