No C 303/10 Official Journal of the European Communities 25. 11. 85 
Opinion on the communication from the Commission to the Council entitled 'Review of the 
European Community's generalized tariff preferences scheme' 
(85/C 303/05) 
In a letter dated 3 June 1985 the Council of the European Communities requested the Economic and 
Social Committee to draw up an opinion on a communication from the Commission to the Council 
entitled 'Review of the European Community's generalized tariff preferences scheme'. 
The Section for External Relations, which was responsible for preparing the Committee's work on 
the subject, adopted its opinion on 10 September 1985, in the light of the report by Mr Cavazzuti. 
At its 229th plenary session (meeting of 25 September 1985), the Economic and Social Committee 
adopted the following opinion with a large majority and five absentions. 
1. The Committee considers that the Community must 
continue to honour its prior commitments regarding access 
to the Community market for products of developing 
countries: the Committee is therefore in favour of 
continuing the GSP for the five-year period 1986 to 1990. 
2. The committee considers it important, both for the 
Community and the developing countries, to maintain and, 
if possible, increase the value of the GSP as: 
— an instrument of development policy for stimulating the 
economies of developing countries in line with their 
own development models, 
— a commercial instrument for encouraging developing 
countries to participate in world trade. 
3. It is felt, none the less, that as a matter of principle, the 
GSP should not be intended to be of unlimited duration. Its 
purpose is to help developing countries to gradually 
progress to a level of economic development which will 
enable them to compete in world markets in accordance 
with the GATT rules. 
4. The Committee calls upon the Community not to 
grant GSP concessions to developing countries whose per 
capita GNP is equal to that of any Member State of the 
Community. 
5. The Committee considers that trade between the EC 
and the State-trading countries must be re-examined in a 
separate context since systems of production, of pricing 
and of assessing the (per capita) gross national product 
differ in these countries. 
6. The Committee also considers that the GSP should be 
administered on the basis of selectivity by country and 
product. Thus it should not cover imports of sensitive 
products from countries having attained a level of 
competitivenes in respect of those products comparable to 
that of the industrialized countries. This kind of cross-
selectivity would work to the advantage of those countries 
which have most need of the GSP. In this context the 
Committee would point out that the United States GSP 
provides for the exclusion of certain countries and products 
and that the clauses concerning the withdrawal of GSP concessions operate automatically, thus providing greater 
certainty for donor and beneficiary countries alike. 
7. The Committee suggests that the following should in 
any case be excluded from the GSP: 
— counterfeit products, on which it took a stand on 3 July 
1985 0), 
— products which, on entering the Community, are 
subject to anti-dumping and/or anti-subsidy measures 
since they distort competition to an unacceptable 
degree, 
— manufactured goods from countries which levy export 
duties on the raw materials used. 
8. The Committee has doubts about the advisability of 
granting GSP concessions for products whose manufacture 
clearly does nothing to promote the development of the 
country of manufacture. 
9. The Committee considers that the administration of 
the GSP could be facilitated by a more effective system of 
processing import data which would give the Commission 
immediate access to all the information necessary for the 
reimposition of customs duties once a ceiling had been 
reached or a quota exhausted. 
10. In cases where a supplier country does not fully 
utilize its quotas, the Committee proposes that the 
following options be considered: 
(a) transfer of unused parts of quotas from one supplier 
country to another during the reference year; 
(b) carrying forward of parts of quotas unused by the end of 
the reference year to the first two months of the next 
year. 
11. It follows that the Committee opposes the setting up 
of a management committee with the task of assisting the 
Commission in taking decisions on the reimposition of 
customs duties. Reimposition should be made automatic 
and mandatory, which would bring a greater degree of 
certainty to the monitoring system, and this is necessary for 
exporters as well as importers. 
(}) OJ No C 218, 29. 8. 1985, p. 7. 
25. 11. 85 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 303/11 
12. It is felt that the classification of products as 
sensitive or non-sensitive — which ought to remain the 
basis for the GSP system and its monitoring — does not 
require a management committee; this can be more 
effectively achieved by annual reviews of the GSP, which 
would enable the economic and social interest groups to 
bring to the Commission's attention any difficulties or 
opportunities arising in particular sectors. 
13. The Committee considers that in the event of the 
reclassification of a product as sensitive, measures ought to 
be taken to enable exporting countries to adapt gradually; 
this can more easily be achieved if annual review of the 
system, as proposed in the previous point, is introduced. 
14. The principle of 'majority' decisions at the Council 
is, of course, in accordance with the EEC Treaty and 
essential to the effective operation of the Community. For 
this reason tb,e Committee would deplore the use of veto by 
any Member State in the absence of overall political 
agreement on decision-making procedures in the Com­
munity. The Committee hopes that it will be possible to 
secure agreement on the introduction of qualified majority 
voting for all EC decision making without delay. 
15. The Committee will revert, in a separate opinion, to 
the problem of international trade in textiles, which is 
governed by the Multifibre Arrangement. 
16. With regard to the import of farm products into the 
Community under the GSP, the Committee notes the 
Commission's intention to supplement and improve the 
offer made by the EC. The Committee would stress the 
importance to the beneficiary countries of a diversification 
of agricultural production and, of local processing of these 
products in so far as is possible. The Community should 
also promote duty-free imports of agricultural products 
which are not in direct competition with products subject 
to a common market regime and it should ensure that the 
excise duties levied on some tropical products in EC 
Member States are abolished or, at least, reduced. 
Done at Brussels, 25 September 1985. 17. With regard to rules of origin the Committee 
supports the Commission's proposal to grant GSP 
concessions for products resulting from outward proces­
sing traffic between the Community and the developing 
countries concerned. 
18. The Committee notes that Spain and Portugal will 
apply the GSP in stages, thereby extending the EC 
concessions. 
19. The Committee considers that a greater volume of 
south-south trade is essential to the development of the 
Third World. For its part, the Community could encourage 
the developing countries benefiting from the GSP to apply 
preferential trading terms among themselves. 
20. The Committee stresses that the line adopted in this 
opinion reflects a wish to see the Community GSP 
harmonized with the systems applied by other donor 
countries. It calls upon these countries to follow suit with a 
view, inter alia, to bringing the import regimes applied to 
the developing countries by all the industrialized countries 
gradually back into conformity with the normal GATT 
rules (reciprocity and non-discrimination). 
21. The Committee once again stresses that in all its 
external relations the Community should contribute to an 
improvement not only of the economic but also of the social 
situation in the world. Recognition of this role by the 
Community must not in any way be regarded as 
interference in the internal affairs of non-EC countries. In 
this context the Committee would draw attention to the 
importance which it has always attached, in its opinions on 
international trade, to respect for human rights and, in 
particular, to the observance of fair standards in respect of 
working conditions, as defined by the International Labour 
Organization. 
The Chairman 
of the Economic and Social Committee 
Gerd MUHR