Rules of Origin
Rules of Origin
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| The Secretary General of the ACP in the Chair of the 6th Group of Experts meeting on All-ACP Rules of Origin with RTFP Director, Mark Pearson, on his left. |
Work has been undertaken by RTFP on both All-ACP Rules of Origin and on COMESA and SADC Rules. The technical work on the latter has been undertaken by UNCTAD, with financing from RTFP and, although still ongoing, included the production of a Comparison Table of Selected Cotonou rules and the ESA & SADC Proposed on Chapters or Headings where most Trade has been Recorded (2005 Trade Flows)
All-ACP Rules
The African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) Group of countries and the regions negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) have been debating internally on how to address Rules of Origin in the framework of EPA negotiations for a number of years. Initially the decision of the ACP was to develop Rules of Origin (RoO) which would be common to all EPAs, as opposed to each of the six EPAs being negotiated having their own Rules of Origin. However, at the ACP Council of Ministers meeting held in Fiji in 2006, it was agreed that time was getting short so each regional negotiating group should start to negotiate its own Rules of Origin. In order not to arrive at a situation whereby each negotiating region would have fundamentally different Rules of Origin, it was also agreed that the ACP Secretariat should prepare a template for use by the regional negotiators in negotiating Rules of Origin.
The proposed ACP template was discussed at an ACP experts meeting in Brussels on 19-20 October 2006. At that meeting it was agreed that the ACP Secretariat would prepare a draft model protocol on Rules of Origin, which would include Rules of Origin for fisheries, which could be used by the regions when they negotiated Rules of Origin with the EC.
The draft model protocol, which was based on an across-the-board value-addition method to confer origin, was discussed at the ACP group of experts meeting on 25-26 January 2007 and, at that meeting, the group of experts proposed that substantial transformation should not be determined by the value addition method alone but that a change of tariff classification method should also be used. The draft was adjusted accordingly for consideration by the group of experts at a follow up meeting in July 2007 (English report and French report)
RTFP has contributed technical documents for the consideration of the experts and has also financed the meetings, including the attendance of independent experts.