Trade and Export Post-Brexit Survey - Rules of Origin

We have been requested by Government to provide feedback on Rules of Origin. If negotiators make progress on the sticking points, discussions with the EU will very quickly progress at a detailed level to help ensure any deal that is struck enables you to export goods tariff-free. Critical to doing that is agreeing product-specific Rules of Origin for plastic products. By taking part in this survey, you will help ensure that we can tell the Government exactly what you would need.

What are Rules of Origin?

Rules of origin are the criteria needed to determine the national source of a product. Essentially, they help to ensure that when you are exporting a ‘British’ product, it really is a product from the UK. In any Free Trade Agreement, the rules of origin are the means by which a product qualifies for preferential treatment i.e. tariff-free passage across the border.

Following the establishment of a BPF Sector Panel on Rules of Origin, the BPF position was to opt for the most flexible form of Rules of Origin that would allow UK manufacturers to comply in a number of ways. This was inline with a position from CEFIC which can be found online HERE. These proposed rules would confer origin on a product if any of the following could be shown to take place in the UK…

• Change of tariff sub-heading (CTSH)
• De Minimis Clause
• Added-Value Rule
• Any of the following….Chemical Reaction, Mixtures and Blends, Purification, Change in Particle Size, Isomer Separation, Biotechnological Processes

We have heard that the European negotiators have largely agreed with the above for raw material HS Codes (3901-3916) but not on products (3916-3926).  This means that in order to be able to prove the plastic products originated in the UK (and therefore be exempt of tariffs when exported to the EU) it would need to meet one of the following….

• Change of tariff heading (CTH) – so, does the processing taking place in the UK change the product you are exporting to the EU to a different 4-digit tariff code from the materials you brought in to make it
• De Minimis Clause
• Added-Value Rule

We therefore need to understand whether or not these Rules will be suitable for your company in order to be able to prove Rules of Origin, or whether we should be asking the negotiation team for product specific exemptions to be put into place.

Specifically, we are interested to understand whether when producing a product are there times when a product is manufactured and the 4 digit HS Code does not change.  For a full list of these CLICK HERE

We are therefore surveying our manufacturers to determine if this proposal adversely affects them. The survey should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete and will help identify if more work is required in this area of negotiation.

Survey Link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5H23VZF

Please complete the survey by Friday 23rd October if possible.