General information
The PAN-EURO-MED zone consists of:
- Member States of the European Union,
- the EFTA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland),
- the Faroe Islands,
- Turkey,
- participants of the Barcelona Process (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia),
- the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
- participants in the EU/Balkan Stabilization and Association Process (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Serbia),
- the Republic of Moldova,
- Georgia
- and Ukraine
The introduction of this zone was intended to create a duty-free trade area with uniform rules of origin and uniform documentation. The following applies: The origin of a company’s products must be in one of the participating countries, then the originating goods can be imported duty-free into any member country.
The origin can also be acquired in several participating countries through working and processing operations (cumulation). Especially for companies producing in the Mediterranean region or in Balkan states, the acquisition of preference through cumulation is advantageous, as this extends the application of preferences acquired there to all participating states.
Why were the alternative rules introduced?
In order to complete this revision act, the EU negotiated for years with its Pan-Euro-Mediterranean partners on modernizing and amending the rules of origin of the Regional Convention currently in force. This failed due to the negative attitude of some contracting states.
In order to enable the majority of contracting states willing to support the modernized and simplified rules of origin nevertheless, a new set of alternatively applicable rules will now be added to the origin protocols of the respective bilateral agreements. These “transitional rules” can be applied optionally to the existing rules of origin of the Regional Agreement until further notice.
What changes with the alternative rules?
The “transitional rules” are alternative, i.e. they do not replace the already existing rules, but are voluntary. When using the new rules, this must be noted in the preference proof with “TRANSITIONAL RULES”. However, only the movement certificate EUR.1 may be used, the movement certificate EUR-MED may no longer be used.
On the supplier’s declaration it must be indicated whether the acquisition of origin has been made according to the classical PEM rules (Pan-Euro-Med rules) or according to the transitional rules. A supplier’s declaration can only be issued on the basis of one of the two rules and cannot be considered as an originating document for the other.
What is changing in GENESYS?
GENESYS is designed from the ground up to map only one agreement per country. The rules themselves also have different calculation strategies than those known so far. Therefore, a large modification within the software would be necessary in order to apply these alternative rules in parallel. Since we are not able to estimate how many of our customers would like to use the alternative rules, we have currently decided against a large investment with questionable benefits.
As the economic operators using these rules have to indicate the information on the supplier’s declaration and on the preference certificates and the two sets of rules must not be mixed, we are nevertheless obliged to make some adjustments. We will therefore create the possibility to record in the supplier declaration of suppliers whether it is calculated on the basis of the transitional rules. This will then have the effect that these “confirmations” will not lead to preferential articles and / or input materials in GENESYS. The supplier declaration for customers will still insist on the “normal” regional agreement and therefore does not need any indication. (Since we received this information very late, the release containing these changes is not expected until Q4/21 or Q1/22).
