Preferential Treatment Of Swiss Re-Imports To EU Allowed To Stand

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

24 June 2004

A long standing administrative arrangement between the EU and Switzerland under which goods re-imported to the Community from Switzerland are given preferential treatment is to be allowed to continue.

The arrangement has been under intensive scrutiny by the European Commission for some time, in the course of which questions were raised about its legal basis. This led the Commission to decide initially that the arrangement should be discontinued.

However, following detailed discussions between Switzerland and the Commission, during which Switzerland made the case that the arrangement was valid under the terms of the 1972 EC/Switzerland Free Trade Agreement, it was agreed that there would be no change, at least insofar as re-imports from Switzerland of products falling within tariff chapters 25-97 are concerned.

The decision means that re-imports of such products, which are given preferential rates of duty on a reciprocal basis, will be allowed to continue, as long as the country of origin for such goods is shown as Switzerland.

However, the Commission and the Swiss agreed that the arrangement cannot apply to EU-originating products which do not benefit from the reciprocal elimination of customs duties under the Free Trade Agreement.

This includes certain raw, non-manufactured agricultural products and processed/manufactured agricultural products.

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