Brussels, 17/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday the General Affairs Council was unable to obtain qualified majority needed for adopting the regulation on the new System of Generalised Preferences (SGP) of the European Union, which is due to enter into force on 1 April (until the end of 2008. Discussion essentially failed on the question of graduation of SGP beneficiary countries in the area of textiles. Member States were mainly divided on the proposal the Commission put forward for the sector where a beneficiary country is excluded from the SGP for a product determined as part of the market for the same products when it has 12.5% of the whole of Community imports under the SGP system. A group of countries: Italy, Portugal and Greece appeal for this graduation threshold to be set at 10%, which would allow India to be excluded from the SGP and which already has 11% market share in EU textile imports. A second group of counties, almost as important argued for a 15% graduation threshold, the normal ceiling for other products. A pending problem involves El Salvador, which should be part of a group of fifty of the poorest countries benefiting from the “Everything but Arms” system. Jean Asselborn, president of the Council said that the Luxembourg presidency would respect the April 1 date limit and examine the case again at Coreper on 24 March. On Thursday the European Commission said that it was “deeply disappointed” by the failure but that they hoped to resolve the problems as soon as possible, explained a spokesperson.