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Free Trade Agreements
Overview:
EU-Mercosur Agreement
On December 6, 2024, the EU and the Mercosur countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) reached a political agreement on a groundbreaking partnership. This agreement aims to enhance their already substantial trade and investment relationship.
Key goals of the new EU-Mercosur trade deal include:
- Increasing bilateral trade and investment.
- Lowering tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
- Creating stable and predictable rules for trade and investment, with improved regulations in areas such as intellectual property rights, food safety standards, competition, and regulatory practices.
- Promoting joint values like sustainable development, worker’s rights, climate change mitigation, environmental protection, corporate responsibility, and high food safety standards.
See our Alert for more information.
New transitional rules for the revised Regional Convention on Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Preferential Rules as of 1 January 2025
On 12 December 2024, the Joint Committee of the PEM Convention adopted Decision No. 2/2024 amending Decision No. 1/2023, introducing new transitional provisions for the application of the Regional Convention (RC) in the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) area. In countries that implement the new transitional provisions:
- The current (old) RC as published in Official Journal L 54 on 26 February 2013, and
- The revised RC as per Decision No. 1/2023 (amended by Decision No. 2/2024) published in Official Journal L/2024/390
Both transitional provisions will apply from 1 January 2025 to 31 December 2025.
Due to the staggered implementation of the transitional provisions, three status groups will be distinguished in the PEM area from 1 January 2025. The European Commission website provides a matrix with the status of the bilateral trade agreements between contracting parties. The C-status represents a bilateral trade agreement which exclusively applies the old RC rules, until the trade agreement has been updated (deadline: 31 December 2025). The R-status represents bilateral trade agreements which exclusively apply the revised RC rules. The CR-status represents trade agreements between contracting parties providing economic operators with the opportunity to apply either the old RC rules or the new RC rules, until the 31 December 2025 deadline. The European Commission expects to update certain statuses from R to CR in January 2025.
The transitional provisions for preferential certificates state that all certificates issued before 1 January 2025, will remain valid within their validity period. Goods with a certificate according to the transitional rules can be used for cumulation within the revised RC. Until 31 December 2025, certificates and declarations must include the statement "REVISED RULES” in field 7. New documentation codes (U078 and U079) have been introduced for import certificates with this statement. Certificates with the incorrect statement ("TRANSITIONAL RULES" instead of "REVISED RULES") will not be rejected. Goods with certificates without "REVISED RULES" can be used for cumulation within the revised RC, but not vice versa. Supplier declarations must also include the statement "REVISED RULES."
For supplier declarations, the European Commission recommends including “REVISED RULES” for goods originating under the revised RC. Declarations with “TRANSITIONAL RULES” instead of “REVISED RULES” will be accepted. Declarations without any marking will be assumed to follow the old RC rules.