The European Commission has adopted a package of proposals that aims to enhance preferential trade with the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) region, including all non-member states in Southeastern Europe (SEE), it said.
The proposals will modernise the EU’s preferential trade agreements with 20 PEM trading partners, including Turkey, Moldova, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, the European Commission said in a statement on Monday.
The package includes simpler product-specific rules, such as the elimination of cumulative requirements, thresholds for local value added, more adapted to EU production needs, and new double transformation for textiles; increased thresholds of tolerance for non-originating materials, to 15% from 10%; the introduction of “full” cumulation, under which the manufacturing operations needed to acquire origin for most products can be split among several countries; the possibility of duty-drawback for most products to help EU exporters compete, the EU Commission said.
“We need to do everything we can to facilitate trade and economic activity between the EU and our neighbours in the Euro-Mediterranean area, and to promote regional integration. This will also help countries like Lebanon recover and rebuild, while at the same time supporting European businesses in accessing new markets,” commissioner for economy Paolo Gentiloni said in the statement.
The package comprises of 21 proposals for Council decisions that will provide for more user-friendly rules of origin in the EU’s trade agreements with most of its neighbouring countries. Trade with these countries accounted for 677 billion euro ($800 billion) in 2019, which is almost half of the EU’s preferential trade, the Commission said.
The new rules will apply alongside those of the Regional Convention on PEM preferential rules of origin, pending the review of the convention, which is currently underway, SeeNews reports.
