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Challenging guidelines

Afghanistan: NGOs adopt code of conduct

AIDS drug:
Brazil achieves price reduction

US Congress slows down
Millennium Challenge Account

German development
budget 2006

Pro-poor growth in practice

Military intervention hardly helps

G8 summit disappoints NGOs

GTZ attracts
international funds

Generic pharma
factory in Kabul

New EU trade
preferences

Privatisation dispute misses the point

Scant participation
by civil society


8-9/2005
  

New EU trade preferences

The European Union has adopted new rules for customs preferences. Within the framework of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP), 178 countries and territories currently either enjoy tariff reductions of 3.5 percentage points on the Most Favoured Nation tariff, or duty-free access to the EU market. The new system, which will come into force at the beginning of 2006 and will remain in effect until 2008, will maintain present GSP rules as well as the “Everything but Arms” initiative (EBA), which, in principle, allows the 50 poorest nations duty-free market access in Europe. In addition, the so-called “GSP plus” preferences will apply to particularly vulnerable countries that have ratified the most important conventions on human rights and environmental protection. At the same time, the EU plans to scrap the special tariff reductions it has granted Pakistan and some South American countries for having taken action against drug cultivation. At the end of 2003, the World Trade Organisation had passed a judgement, according to which these measures breach international trade law (see D+C/E+Z 2004:2, pg. 82).

The EU Commission also wants to simplify the process of monitoring whether certain goods from specific countries should continue to be treated with preference. Until now, the Commission has based decisions on three criteria: the country’s share of imports from all countries with preferences, its development status and its dependence on exports. In future, the Commission will only consider the fist criterion. If a country’s share exceeds the mark of 15 % (12.5 % for textiles) of the total preferential imports in any given goods category, it will lose the preferences for that category. While the new system was being debated, non-governmental organisations argued that it was wrong to give up the other two criteria as they made sense in development terms. (ell)


On the Internet:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/global/gsp/memo230605_en.htm