Focus on implementation and enforcement of EU trade agreements: Commission presented its first consolidated report

The Report covers four priority areas:

• Making full use of the opportunities provided by EU trade agreements (section II);
• Supporting the take-up of trade agreements by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (section III);
• Addressing barriers and finding solutions (section IV)
• Bilateral and multilateral enforcement of trade commitments: Resolving Disputes (section V).

The Report consolidates into a single report the former yearly report on the implementation of EU trade agreements and the former yearly Trade and Investment Barriers Report (TIBR).

It presents the actions taken by the Commission to eliminate trade and investment barriers in third country markets.  It contains information on activities undertaken to improve market access, in particular for SMEs.  It also reports on trade enforcement actions taken by the Commission under the dispute settlement systems.  Finally, the report provides statistical data on trade and investment.

Particularly interesting is section III “Supporting the take-up of trade agreements by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises”, where useful first-hand information on  trade is provided to companies and SMEs.

Specifically, the Access2Markets portal offers a free, one-stop shop source of information on tariffs, taxes, quotas, import formalities and procedures for imports and exports. The platform includes a self-assessment tool (ROSA – Rules of Origin Assessment Tool) to help businesses understand the rules of origin of different EU agreements.

The ROSA tool captures 26 trade agreements with 36 countries (including the UK, Central American partners, Columbia/Peru/Ecuador, Vietnam, Canada, Japan and South Korea) and will extended to cover most trade agreements by the end of 2021.

The Access2Procurement tool provides important and up-to-date information about public tender opportunities outside of the EU that are open to European companies. This tool will be especially useful to small and medium sized companies that have less access to procurement-related information in third countries.

In this first phase, it contains information on government procurement tenders from Canada to which EU companies have access, based on Canada’s commitments both under the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement GPA and the bilateral EU-Canada Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA). Further countries will be integrated into the tool at a later stage.

Further information on the EU framework for implementation and enforcement of trade agreements can be found here.