NINETEENth ANNUAL REVIEW OF THE
IMPLEMENTATION AND
OPERATION OF THE AGREEMENT ON RULES OF ORIGIN
Note by the Secretariat[1]
Article 6.1 of the Agreement on
Rules of Origin provides that "the Committee shall review annually the
implementation and operation of Part II and Part III of this Agreement having
regard to its objectives". The
outcome of such review will be the Committee's Annual Review to the Council for
Trade in Goods on the implementation and operation of the Agreement on Rules of
Origin. This background document is circulated by the Secretariat in
preparation for the 19th annual review of the implementation and
operation of the Agreement, to be conducted at the meeting of the Committee on
Rules of Origin on 26 September 2013.
1.1. Government representatives of all WTO Members and Observers are
also Members and Observers to the CRO. In addition, the following international organizations also have observer status
at the CRO: ACP, EFTA, IADB, IMF, OECD, UNCTAD, WCO and World Bank.
2.1. Chairman: Mr. Marhijn VISSER
(The Netherlands)
3.1. The Committee on Rules of Origin (CRO) held two formal meetings on 18
April and 26 September 2013. The
minutes of these meetings are contained in documents G/RO/M/60 and G/RO/M/61
respectively. Some informal meetings and
a series of bilateral consultations between the Chairman and selected Members
have also taken place in 2013.
3.2. With regard to the work under Part III of the Agreement, the CRO took note of 20
new notifications under Article 5 and paragraph 4 of Annex II of the
Agreement. Notifications received in 2013
bring the total number of Members having notified some rules of origin to 87
(the EU and its Members States being counted as one). The latter number
reflects both notifications made to the CRO as well as to other relevant bodies
of the WTO, that is, the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements and the
Committee on Trade and Development. A
full list of notifications available and those outstanding was prepared by the
Secretariat and reviewed by the CRO (RD/RO/7). The Chairman urged Members who
had not yet notified their rules of origin to the Committee to do so as early
as possible.
3.3. With regard to the Harmonization Work
Programme under Part IV of the Agreement, the General Council, at its meeting on
27 July 2007, recognized that delegations in the CRO had encountered
such difficulties on the "implications" issue and in the sector of
machinery that guidance from the General Council was warranted on how to take
these issues forward. The recommendation
of delegations in the CRO was that work on these issues be suspended until such
guidance from the General Council would be forthcoming. The General Council agreed and
instructed the CRO to focus its work, in the meantime, on the technical aspects
of the overall architecture.
3.4. Accordingly, the CRO, at its meetings on 18 April, continued technical discussions on the Rules of Appendix 2 on the basis of
a compromise proposal made by the Chairman (first item in the Annex of
G/RO/M/60). While drawing support from
many Members, the proposed text could not be endorsed and additional
negotiations would be required to finalize the language of that Appendix. In
addition, the CRO took note of the transposition of draft harmonized rules of
origin into more recent versions of the HS: 2002, 2007 and 2012. During a technical workshop in April
2013, the WTO Secretariat presented the results of that work and informed
Members that a fully consolidated text would be prepared containing all the
draft harmonized rules of origin in their most recent version. In addition, the Committee also took note of
recommendations, submitted by the Technical Committee on Rules of Origin, of
simplified rules of origin for draft rules transposed into the HS2002 and HS2007
versions (G/RO/W/143).
4.1. The CRO considered its report to the CTG (G/RO/W145).
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[1] This document has been prepared under the Secretariat's own
responsibility and without prejudice to the positions of Members and to their
rights and obligations under the WTO.