NOTIFICATION UNDER PARAGRAPH 4 OF ANNEX II
OF THE AGREEMENT ON RULES OF ORIGIN

PREFERENTIAL RULES OF ORIGIN

1._       Paragraph 4 of Annex II to the Agreement on Rules of Origin envisages that Members shall provide to the Secretariat as soon as possible their existing or new preferential rules of origin, including a listing of the preferential arrangements to which they apply, judicial decisions, and administrative rulings of general application relating to their preferential rules of origin. Lists of information received and available within the Secretariat shall be circulated to Members by the Secretariat under the _G/RO/N/ series.

2._       The Committee on Rules of Origin further agreed that, with respect to preferential rules of origin, notifications made to the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements (CRTA) or to the Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) could also suffice to discharge their notification obligations under the Agreement on Rules of Origin (_G/RO/M/59). As a result, the Committee agreed that notifications which had initially been received by the CRTA or the CTD should also be circulated by the Secretariat to the CRO. The information regarding such notifications, including related to preferential rules of origin, can, in addition, be retrieved through the WTO database of regional trade agreements (http://rtais.wto.org) or in the WTO database of preferential trade agreements (http://ptadb.wto.org).

3._       Accordingly, the following notification has been received:

PROTOCOL С TO THE AGREEMENT ON FREE TRADE BETWEEN UKRAINE AND THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA CONCERNING THE DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT OF "ORIGINATING PRODUCTS" AND METHODS OF ADMINISTRATIVE COOPERATION

A.     PREFERENTIAL RULES OF ORIGIN

Article 24 of the Agreement on Free Trade between Ukraine and the Republic of Macedonia ("the Agreement"), done in Skopje on 18 January 2001[1], refers to the Protocol C on the rules of origin and administrative cooperation methods ("the Protocol"), which is an integral part of the Agreement.

Having regard to Article 34 of the Protocol, empowering the Joint Committee established by the Agreement to take a decision to amend provisions of the Protocol, the Joint Committee by its Decision No. 2/2022 of 6 October 2022[2] replaced the Protocol with a new Protocol C and Annexes to it.

Decision No. 2/2022 replaces the existing bilateral system of rules of origin with a multilateral framework based on the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin.

Decision No. 2/2022 was ratified by the Law of Ukraine No. 3073-IX of 2 May 2023[3] and entered into force for Ukraine on 6 July 2023.

The text of the Law in Ukrainian, as well as the text of the Decision No. 2/2022 in English, are available at the following link: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/3073-20#n2.

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