La réponse de Cecilia Malmström

1. CECILIA MALMSTRÖM
MEMBER OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Brussels, λ/November 2019
PVM/lw S(2019) 7984765
Dear Honourable Members,
I would like to thank you for your letter of 13 November 2019 addressed to me and
Commissioner Hogan on how to facilitate the use and understanding of rules of origin for
SMEs. Your letter is timely and reinforces the requests raised by some stakeholders on the
development of a self-assessment tool on rules of origin.
The Commission has been attentively listening to stakeholders’ views on how to improve the
use of EU Trade Agreements. Last year DG TRADE conducted a survey regarding the
application of rules of origin, and received more than one thousand replies from EU
businesses, including many SMEs. While 76% of the respondents confirmed that they can
meet the specific rules for their products, a majority of respondents asked for more user-
friendly information about rules of origin. They provided concrete suggestions on how to
improve the currently available information on the Commission websites. 37% of the
respondents would welcome an interactive online tool that would help them assess their
compliance with the rules and guide them through the origin procedures. Further details of the
survey are presented in the Commission Staff Working Document on preferential rules of
origin1, transmitted to the European Parliament this year.
We share your view that user-friendly access to information is key. Therefore, my services
have been working hard and invested significant resources to upgrade the information to help
companies and SMEs in particular to take full benefits of trade agreements. This work is
materialising into the new Access2Markets platform, which will contain a large number of
practical information on exports and imports for companies. The platform will also contain
the rules of origin for each product and for each partner with whom the EU has an agreement
in all official languages together with detailed explanations of rules of origin provisions and
procedures. It will include practical examples and - crucially - a freely available interactive
tool to self-assess whether a product can benefit from a given EU trade agreement. We expect
to launch a beta version in early 2020 and fine-tune it based on feedback from stakeholders.
Christophe HANSEN
Bernd LANGE
Heidi HAUTALA
Geert BOURGEOIS
Karin KARLSBRO
Kathleen VAN BREMPT
Helmut SCHOLZ
Antonio TAJANI
Jörgen WARBORN
Markus FERBER
Annie SCHREUER-PIERIK
Danuta HÜBNER
Massimiliano SALINI
Markus PIEPER
Daniel CASPARY
Enikő GYŐRI
Reinhard BÜTIKOFER
Inma RODRÍGUEZ-PINERO
Liudas MAŽYLIS
1 SWD(2019) 172 of 15 April 2019, https://ec.euroDa.eu/transparencv/regdoc/rep/10102/2019/BN/SWD-2019-
172-F2-EN-MA1N-PART-I.PDF
B-1049 BRUSSELS - TEL. (+32-2) 29Θ 63 66 - FAX (+32-2) 297 68 94
Ref. Ares(2019)7186976 - 21/11/2019

2. This new platform will address the elements requested in your letter. It will empower SMEs
to make a well-informed assessment of whether their products meet the rules of origin and
guide them through all procedures. It shall also guide companies on how to seek Binding
Origin Information determinations from the authorities, should they have doubts on their own
self-assessment.
I am convinced that the new Access2Markets platform, and in particular the rules of origin
self-assessment tool, will help EU businesses to navigate rules of origin and fully leverage the
potential that EU Trade Agreements offer to them.
Yours sincerely,
2
Electronically signed on 21/11/2019 09:14 (UTC+01) in accordance with article 4.2 (Validity of electronic documents) of Commission Decision 2004/563