RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  WT/REG170/M/3 
20 October 2006 
 
 (06-5095) 
Committee on Regional Trade Agreements 
Forty Fourth Session  
 
 
 
EXAMINATION OF THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, GOODS 
 
Note on the Meeting of 13 October 2006  
 
Chairman:  Mr. A. Egger (Switzerland) 
  
1. The meeting was convened in document WTO/AIR/2900. 
2. Under Agenda Item B.II of its 44
th Session, the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements 
(hereinafter CRTA or the Committee) took up the thir d round of examination of the goods aspects of 
the Enlargement of the European Union (EU). 
3. The Chairman  noted that the proceedings of the first and second rounds of examination, 
which had taken place in July 2005 and April 20 06, could be found in documents WT/REG170/M/1 
and corrigendum 1 and WT/REG170/M/2.  Since then , the Parties had provided replies to questions 
put by delegations which had been circulated in documents WT/REG170/4 and WT/REG170/5.  The 
calculation of general incidence had been carried out by the Secretariat and distributed as document 
WT/REG170/6/Rev.1.  Before inviting the European  Communities (EC), and then Members, to make 
specific comments on the general incidence calculation,  and given the advanced stage of the process, 
the Chairman proposed to open the floor for comment s and questions on all sections of the Standard 
Format (WT/REG170/2), and to discuss the pa per on general incidence in a second phase. 
4. The representative of Australia  stated that he wished to rai se once again the issue first raised 
in the CRTA at its meeting of 26 July 2005, and in 2004 at meetings of the Council for Trade in Goods concerning the EC's scheduled export su bsidies reduction commitments for agricultural 
products.  In 2004 the EC unilaterally withdrew its EC 15 schedule and the individual schedules of the 
10 new acceding member states.  Since 1 May 2004, the EC had advised that the EC 15 schedule had 
been applied on a de facto  basis to the EC 25.  At the date of the meeting, the EC had not tabled a 
draft EC 25 schedule relating to export subsidies and domestic suppor t commitments, nor had the EC 
provided any detailed information on the methodology it intended to adopt in preparing the draft EC 
25 schedule in relation to those commitments.  The EC had merely stated, most recently in document 
WT/REG/170/5 of 19 September 2006, in response to a question from Canada, that it intended to use 
the established methodology for the consolidation of agricultural support commitments, and that it 
would comply with any obligation pursuant to Ar ticle XXIV:5 of GATT 1994.  Furthermore, the EC 
had stated that in relation to the consolidation of  its commitments, it had relied on the well-established 
WTO approach, using the three most recent years as a reference period.  The representative of Australia wished to reiterate that any modi fication of domestic suppor t and export subsidies 
commitments contained in Part IV of a Member's  schedule resulting from the enlargement of the 
European Union could not be nego tiated bilaterally under GATT Artic le XXIV:6 and Article XXVIII.  
Modifications of tariff concessions under these Articl es as a result of bilateral negotiations with 
interested Members were a completely separate process from the modifications of the multilateral 
commitments contained in Part IV of a Member's schedule.  WT/REG170/M/3 
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  5. The representative of Australia therefore requested  the EC delegation to provide the following 
information: an explanation of what the EC understood to be the established methodology for the 
consolidation of agricultural support commitments ; detailed calculations a nd supporting information 
upon which the consolidation had been based;  and an  indication of when the EC intended to submit 
its draft EC 25 schedule in relation to agricultural pr oducts.  He observed that this information was of 
particular urgency in view of the forthcoming en largement of the European Union to 27 member 
states as of 1 January 2007.  
6. The representative of the United States
 noted that her delegation had had the same question 
after the last meeting and that she shared many of the views and requests put forward by the Australian delegation.  Her de legation would have liked at a minimum that the European 
Communities had confirmed the budgetary outlay and quantity commitments in respect of the export 
subsidies reduction commitments and had provided a schedule for negotiating these commitments, if 
the levels were still undetermined.  She would appreciate an in-depth answer to this question. 
7. The representative of the European Communities
 stated that her delegation would not provide 
a reply with substantive information during the mee ting, and asked the delegates of Australia and the 
United States to submit their questions in writing.  She also added that her delegation was satisfied 
with its reply to Canada, and that in its view  the established methodology was followed by other 
Members. 
8. The Chairman  then invited the European Communities to comment on the note prepared by 
the Secretariat on the general incidence calcula tion, distributed as document WT/REG170/6/Rev.1.  
9. The representative of the European Communities  said that the EC would not undertake a 
thorough examination of the note, but welcomed the positive results of the study on general incidence, 
since the EC 25 customs union had been found compliant .  She also drew the Committee's attention to 
footnote 1 of the document, where it was indicat ed that there was no agreed methodology for 
calculating ad valorem  equivalents.  The EC stressed that it did not fully agree with the methodology 
used by the Secretariat on this point. 
10. The representative of Australia  commented on the slight fall in the weighted average tariff, as 
shown in the table under paragraph 6 of document WT /REG170/6/Rev.1.  He pointed out that for the 
EU 15 original member states it was more likely th at the weighted average applied rates had fallen 
because of the continued implementation of the EC 's Uruguay Round commitments, and that the fall 
would had been unrelated to the enlargement.  He a dded that this could perhaps be seen as a slight 
flaw in the methodology.  In the case of the ten acceding countries, the Secretariat's calculation was 
likely to be valid, because there were fewer uni mplemented Uruguay Round commitments by the new 
acceding countries as of 1 January 2003, so the fall was in all likelihood due to the enlargement 
process.  As a consequence of this, the overall results would stand.  He added that he wanted to raise 
this as a technical point, that could be relevant in the future.  
11. The representative of Colombia  said that it was interesting to see how the general impact of 
the customs union had changed after the enlargement,  and how the accession to the EC had resulted in 
the ten new member states significantly lowering th eir bound tariffs.  She regretted however that the 
analysis did not show the damage occurred by certain WTO Members as a consequence of the 
enlargement.  Colombia used to export to various  members of the EC, under preferential schemes or 
tariff rate quotas, at duty free or very low tariff ra tes.  In the period between the enlargement and 
1 January 2006 market access conditions for Colomb ian goods in several EC countries had been 
substantially affected by the introduction of a co mplex import system which included specific tariffs, 
a system of import licenses, and a complicated system of quotas administration.  WT/REG170/M/3 
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  12. She added that it was a shame that the analysis of general incidence did not show the specific 
impact of the enlargement on WTO Members and st ated that, even if the "added value" of the 
EU enlargement was interesting, the Committee needed to recognise that the enlargement had 
occasioned enormous prejudice to Colombian exporters  of pineapple.  Since this prejudice had not 
been compensated, the issue of retaliation had ari sen.  Subsequently Colombia had suspended its 
intention to retaliate at the request of the EC, wh ich had asked for an extension of the negotiating time 
of six months, three of which had already passed w ithout there being any atte mpt to negotiate on this 
matter. 
13. The representative of the United States  thanked the Secretariat for preparing the document 
and pointed out that, in addition to specific products that had experienced increa ses in rates, for which 
the United States had finished negotiations with  the European Union under Article XXIV:6 and 
Article XXVIII, the calculations of the Secretariat sh owed that the weighted average tariffs for some 
of the acceding countries were lower before joinin g the EU.  She focused her intervention on two 
areas of technical concern.  The first concerne d paragraph 4(b) of docum ent WT/REG170/6/Rev.1.  
She asked for confirmation that under "contractua l preferences" maintained by the EU 15 the 
Secretariat had included all preferential trade; in  other terms, that all that was measured in the 
calculations was MFN trade.  She also asked if preferential trade of the ten new acceding members 
had been removed from the analysis or not, and said that it seemed that preferential trade was 
correctly removed from the analysis for the EU 15,  but not for the new member states, several of 
which had applied preferential conditions under GSP programmes, under the Central and Eastern 
Europe Free Trade Agreement among themselves, a nd with South Eastern Europe, as well as under 
the Europe Agreements with the EU 15.  As rega rds paragraph 5(a)(i) of the document which referred 
to the "average of EC(15) MFN applied tariff ra tes and the ten acceding countries' applied tariff 
rates", she asked for clarification as to whether the omission of "MFN" from the description of the 
tariff rates for the ten acceding countries was an oversi ght in drafting the note, or if instead it reflected 
a difference in the methodology applied to the two groups  of figures.  She also asked the Secretariat to 
revise paragraph 6 of the note, so that the averag e customs duties collected were shown in millions 
instead of in billions of dollars.  She asked this for transparency reasons, so that there would be a 
better sense of the outcome of the enlargement for smaller countries, such as Estonia, Latvia, and 
Malta.  She added that the fact that these countri es were smaller should not mean that the figures on 
their customs duties collected should be more difficult to understand. 
14. A representative of the Secretariat  stated that she would contact the Statistics Division and 
ask them to provide the exact methodology used, which would be transmitted to the Committee.  
15. The representative of the European Communities , in replying to the intervention from the 
representative from Colombia, stated that as indicated in earlier meetings, the CRTA was not the appropriate forum to discuss negotiations on compen satory adjustments, and that the review process 
and the negotiations on compensa tion should not be mixed.  
16. The Chairman
 said that there were some issues to be clarified and invited the delegations of 
the United States and Australia to forward their ques tions in writing to the Secretariat by 3 November, 
and the European Communities to respond in writing no later than 24 November.  He  added that the 
Committee would be informed by the Secretariat regarding the statistics on the pre-enlargement 
situation.  He proposed to consider the examinati on as terminated, and to ask the Secretariat to begin 
drafting the report.  
17. The representative of the United States  stated that, while her delegation was generally 
enthusiastic about finishing as many examinations as possible, there were still some outstanding questions, particularly on the methodology, so she was willing to presume that the examination was 
closed, but provided a satisfactory response was received.  She proposed that Members had a month WT/REG170/M/3 
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  after receiving the replies on the question on expor t subsidies and on the methodology used in the 
general incidence paper to ask the Comm ittee to consider these matters again.  
18. The representative of Australia
 supported the representative of the United States' proposal. 
19. The Chairman  then proposed to conclude the exam ination.  Members would have a month 
from the receipt of the responses to notify the Co mmittee of their intention to discuss the outstanding 
issues again.  It was so agreed . 
20. The Committee took note  of the comments made.  
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