To ask the Prime Minister if she will raise at the next meeting of the European Council the cost to member states of the reunification of Germany within the European Economic Community; and if she will make a statement.

This matter was considered at the informal summit on 28 April about which I informed the House on 1 May. The financial effects of the integration into the Economic Community of the territory which is now the German Democratic Republic are inevitably uncertain, given the lack of any reliable economic statistics for the German Democratic Republic, the unknown timing of unification, and the inevitable unreliability of present estimates of the likely effect on the German Democratic Republic economy of (a) German economic and monetary union this summer and (b) unification, and hence Economic Community entry, next year or later.