The European Parliament adopted by 687 votes to 1, with 8 abstentions, a legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion, on behalf of the Union, of the Agreement in the form of an Exchange of Letters between the European Union and the Republic of Cuba pursuant to Article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 relating to the modification of concessions on all the tariff-rate quotas included in the EU Schedule CLXXV as a consequence of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.
Following the recommendation of the Committee on International Trade, Parliament gave its consent to the conclusion of the agreement.
As a reminder, the EU formally launched the negotiation process (under Article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994) with several WTO members in Geneva in October 2018.
The negotiations are based on a ‘joint approach’ developed in 2017 by the EU and the UK on how to ‘apportion’ the quantitative commitments contained in the EU-28's WTO schedule for the EU's 143 WTO tariff quotas for agricultural, fisheries and industrial products.
The basis of this approach is that the existing volume of each TRQ would be fully maintained in the future but split across two separate customs territories: the EU27 and the UK.
The principle of the applied methodology is based on the trade flows into the EU27 and the UK during a representative reference period for all WTO TRQs. The agreed methodology of the apportionment is described in detail in Regulation (EU) 2019/216 of the European Parliament and the Council.
On 15 June 2018, the Council authorised the Commission to launch GATT Article XXVIII negotiations with the WTO Members concerned with a view to apportioning the Union's WTO tariff quota concessions.
The negotiations with Cuba resulted in an agreement in the form of an exchange of letters which was initialled in Geneva on 3 July 2020.