Commercial Information Circulars

24-hour hotline : 23 922 922

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

Ref : EIC 230/3

18 January 2016

Dear Sirs,

Commercial Information Circular No. 84/2016

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

Further to Commercial Information Circular No. 588/2015 of 26 June 2015, 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 can be accessed through the following link:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32015R2449&from=EN

DETAILS

2.Temporary tariff suspension applies to products of which the Union production is currently inadequate or non-existent and thus, the needs of user industries in the Union cannot be met. Products for which tariff duties are temporarily suspended can be imported into the Union 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 Union'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 and the end date for the mandatory review of a number of products in order to allow duty-free imports beyond that date.

4.Details of the amendments are set out in the amending regulation and its annexes which shall apply from 1 January 2016 (except for the amendments pertaining to the product of CN code ex 3824 90 92 and TARIC code 88 which have applied from 1 January 2015).

ENQUIRIES

5.For enquiries concerning the contents 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.