Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council implementing the safeguard clause and the anti-circumvention mechanism providing for the temporary suspension of tariff preferences of the Association Agreement between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Moldova, of the other part

The Association Agreement with Moldova, like the majority of the EU's trade Agreements, includes a bilateral safeguard clause. By this instrument preferences can be temporarily suspended in case their application would result in an unexpected and significant increase of imports causing economic damage to the domestic industry of the importing party (i.e. it is possible to either suspend the further tariff liberalization or reintroduce the MFN customs duty rate).

Furthermore, this Agreement also includes a so-called anti-circumvention mechanism, which provides for the possibility to reintroduce the MFN customs duty rate when imports of certain agricultural goods from Moldova exceed a given threshold without due justification of their exact origin.

An implementing regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council is necessary to put in place in the EU’s internal legislation the necessary instrument to be able to apply the bilateral safeguard clause and the anti-circumvention mechanism.

The attached proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council is largely based on comparable implementing regulations which were discussed and agreed among the three institutions for each of the recent FTAs currently in force: Korea (regulation published in 2011), Central America (regulation published in 2013) and Colombia and Peru (regulation published in 2013).

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2015)154: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2015:154:FIN

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