Attachment

THE TRADE COMMITTEE,

Having regard to the Interim Partnership Agreement between the European Community, of the one part, and the Pacific States, of the other part^f1 (the ‘Agreement’), signed in London on 30 July 2009, and in particular Article 68(3) and Article 78, in conjunction with Article 41 of Protocol II thereof,

Whereas:

The Agreement has been provisionally applied by the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Fiji and the Independent State of Samoa since 20 December 2009, 28 July 2014 and 31 December 2018 respectively.

Annex II to Protocol II of the Agreement is based on the 2007 version of the Harmonized System (HS) Nomenclature annexed to the International Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System of the World Customs Organisation (WCO). The WCO has issued a new HS Nomenclature 2017, effective from 1 January 2017. It is necessary to update Annex II to Protocol II of the Agreement to align it with the 2017 version of the HS Nomenclature. However, the status quo regarding the rules of origin should be maintained because changes made to the HS Nomenclature are not intended to affect the rule of origin applicable to a given product.

Annex VIII to Protocol II of the Agreement lists the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) of the European Union. The status of some of the territories has recently changed: Saint Barthélemy (FR) and Bermuda (UK) became OCTs associated with the Union on 1 January 2012 and 1 January 2014 respectively, and Mayotte (FR) became an Outermost Region (OR) of the Union on 1 January 2014. It is necessary to update the list of OCTs in Annex VIII to Protocol II of the Agreement in order to align the list with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION: