Commercial Information Circulars

24-hour hotline : 23 922 922

e-mail address : enquiry@tid.gov.hk

Ref : EIC 230/3

7 July 2016

Dear Sirs,

Commercial Information Circular No. 559/2016

European Union (EU)* : Temporary tariff suspension for certain agricultural and industrial products

Further to Commercial Information Circular No. 84/2016 of 18 January 2016, the Council of the EU has adopted a regulation to amend the list of agricultural and industrial products of which import tariffs will be partially or totally suspended. The amending regulation is available at:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R1051&from=EN

DETAILS

2.Temporary tariff suspension applies to products of which the EU production is currently inadequate or non-existent and thus, the needs of user industries in the EU cannot be met. Products for which tariff duties are temporarily suspended can be imported into the EU at reduced or zero rate.

3.The Council has amended the existing regulation on temporary suspension of autonomous tariff duties on certain agricultural and industrial products to insert and to delete a number of products to reflect the EU's interest. Among the amendments, descriptions of some products are modified in order to take account of technical product developments, economic trends on the market or to carry out linguistic adaptations, while other amendments include amending CN codes.

4.Details of the amendments are set out in the amending regulation and its annexes which shall apply from 1 July 2016 (except for the amendments pertaining to the product of TARIC code 8708 99 97 50 which have applied from 1 January 2016).

ENQUIRIES

5.For enquiries concerning the content of this circular, please contact the undersigned at telephone number 2398 5684.

Yours faithfully,

(Miss Jessica MAK)
for Director-General of Trade and Industry

* The EU member countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.