Imports of textile products from certain third countries not covered by bilateral agreements, protocols or other arrangements, or by other specific Union import rules. Recast

PURPOSE: codification of Council Regulation (EC) No 517/94 of 7 March 1994 on common rules for imports of textile products from certain third countries not covered by bilateral agreements, protocols or other arrangements, or by other specific Community import rules.

PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.

ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council

BACKGROUND: Council Regulation (EC) No 517/946 has been substantially amended several times. It is recalled that on 1 April 1987, the Commission decided to instruct its staff that all acts should be codified after no more than ten amendments, stressing that this is a minimum requirement. The Conclusions of the Presidency of the Edinburgh European Council (December 1992) confirmed this requirement, stressing the importance of codification.

The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission have agreed, by an interinstitutional agreement dated 20 December 1994, that an accelerated procedure may be used for the fast-track adoption of codification instruments.

CONTENT: in the interests of clarity and rationality, the purpose of this proposal is to undertake a codification of Council Regulation (EC) No 517/94 on common rules for imports of textile products from certain third countries not covered by bilateral agreements, protocols or other arrangements, or by other specific Community import rules.

The new Regulation will supersede the various acts incorporated in it; fully preserving the content of the acts being codified.

At the same time, it is also appropriate to introduce certain slight substantive amendments in Articles 4(2) (Chapter I - General Principles), 6(4) (Chapter II - Union information and investigation procedure) and 23 (Chapter IV- Management of Union import restrictions) of that Regulation. Therefore, the proposal is being presented in the form of a recast.

The proposal is part of an alignment exercise following the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon to ensure that the previous decision making procedures in trade policy were aligned to the new regime of delegated and implementing acts.

Currently, the only countries the EU is importing textiles from that are not covered by bilateral agreements, protocols or other arrangements or by other specific EU import rules – including the Generalised Scheme of Preferences and the Everything but Arms arrangement – are Belarus and North Korea.

The proposed Regulation:

• sets annual quantitative limits for the imports of a number of textile products from these two countries, the management and distribution of which is done through a Commission Implementing Regulation, and it allows for the establishment of Union surveillance and safeguard measures;
• allows for the imposition of surveillance measures on other third countries where textile imports originating in them cause or threaten to cause serious injury to EU production of like or directly competitive products.

Given that the textile sector is a sensitive one for the EU, the proposal aims to ensure that the applicable rules are clear and user-friendly for the operators concerned, and that they ensure legal certainty.