In a note dated 29 January 1981, the Secretary-General circulates the draft reply from the French delegation to the Council of Western European Union to Recommendation 362 on international industrial consortia and collaborative arrangements for the production of high technology military equipment. The Council shares the WEU Assembly’s concern, and the Member States intend to pursue their cooperation efforts in the field of armaments. But the Council considers that it is difficult to entrust the Standing Armaments Committee (SAC) with the task of monitoring the progress made in the Atlantic Alliance in the area of interoperability and standardisation of defence equipment. Given that not all members of the independent European Programme Group (IEPG) are members of the SAC, information on the IEPG’s activities can only be supplied to the Assembly members in a national framework and insofar as their governments participate in IEPG. In order to establish a ‘transatlantic dialogue’, there must be close European cooperation and the problem of harmonising the standards in force on both sides of the Atlantic must be resolved.