Free Trade Agreements, Preferential Rules Of Origin Under The Coordination Of Research

In nowadays, with the fast development of global economy and close cooperation between countries, rules of origin become a central topic in the Free Trade Agreement negotiations. The WTO Agreement on Rules of Origin establishes disciplines on rules of origin which"are not related to contractual or autonomous trade regimes leading to the granting of tariff preferences going beyond the application of paragraph 1 of Article 1 of GATT 1994". The diversity of RTAs results in a lack of uniformity in preferential rules of origin. Apart from the Declaration contained in the Annex II, there are no multilaterally-agreed disciplines on"preferential rules of origin". The harmonization of preferential rules of origin is not compulsory in WTO but necessary both for the benefit of the country and the producers. This essay is based on the research on the preferential rules of origin in China's existed FTAs, intending to identify the potentialnon-coherent in those rules and find possible solution for the harmonization of the preferential rules of origin. This essay contains the following three major parts:The First part has an overview of the general principles of rules and origin, and the relationship between the preferential rules of origin and FTAs. Then it further explores different RTA provisions relating to the determination of origin, which includes the wholly obtained standard, and three main methods used to establish substantial transformation, namely the change in tariff heading method, the percentage criterion method and the percentage criterion, and other methods used to facilitate the practice of these standards, including the accumulation provision and tolerant principle.The second part focuses on the EU efforts in harmonizing the rules of origin. It describes the practice of harmonization in the Pan-European system and evaluates the difference between the rules of origin in the FTAs of EC. The last part examines the existing preferential rules of origin in China and carries out an comparative study in those different FTAs. In the light of the positive and negative effects of the rules of origin, this part intends to find the best practice for harmonizing the preferential rules origin in China's FTAs.