The Committee on International Trade adopted the report by Bernd LANGE (S&D, DE) on the draft Council decision on the conclusion, on behalf of the Union, of the Agreement between the European Union and the United States of America 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.
The committee responsible recommended that the European Parliament give its consent to the conclusion of the agreement.
As a reminder, in October 2018, in the run up to the UKs withdrawal from the EU, the EU formally launched the negotiations process (under Article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994) with a number of WTO Members in Geneva. The underlying principle of the negotiations is a joint approach developed between the EU and the UK back in 2017 on how to apportion the quantitative commitments contained in the EU28 WTO schedule for the 143 EU agricultural, fish and industrial WTO tariff rate quotas (TRQs).
For the majority of the TRQs where the USA is concerned, the apportioned volumes proposed by the EU were accepted by the USA. Changes in volumes have been agreed for some TRQs mostly to take into account a more recent reference period or avoid non-commercially viable volumes on the UK side. In addition, the EU27 share of the USA and Canadas country-specific beef TRQ will be revised and the in-quota rate for the erga omnes beef TRQ will be reduced.
Negotiations with the USA resulted in an Agreement that was initialled on 5 March 2021 in Geneva. The relevant Regulation (EU) 2019/216 of the European Parliament and Council and Commission Implementing Regulations (EU) 2020/761 and (EU) 2020/1988 will be amended to reflect these amended TRQ volumes. Consequently, the European Commission proposes to the Council to authorise the conclusion of the Agreement.
The objective of the Agreement is to provide for the apportionment of the tariff rate quotas included in the EU Schedule CLXXV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 as a consequence of the United Kingdoms withdrawal from the Union, pursuant to Article XXVIII of GATT 1994.