Navigating the PEM rules in 2025

Annette Reiser
Annette Reiser
Attorney at Law, Customs and Trade Compliance, nettes`globaltrade, Germany
Published 19 May 2025

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This webinar by Annette Reiser, Attorney at Law specialising in Customs and Trade Compliance, explains the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) system of preferential origin and cumulation, and what customs and trade compliance professionals need to know about the transition to the revised 2023 rules during 2025.

Topics covered:

  • The WTO/GATT legal basis for equal tariff treatment (Article I, most-favoured-nation principle) and why free trade agreements are the recognised exception
  • The history of the Pan-European and Pan-Euro-Mediterranean accumulation systems, from 1997 through the 2005 Barcelona process and the 2007 PEM Convention initiative to the 2012 rules of origin
  • The 2023 "revised" rules of origin and their improvements over the 2012 rules: full accumulation, duty drawback for most products, simpler and more flexible product rules, average-price calculation, the increased 15% tolerance, the non-manipulation rule, flexible accounting segregation, and electronic origin certificates
  • The current transitional period (1 January to end of 2025) in which both the 2012 and 2023 rule sets remain in force, and what companies must track and state on supplier's declarations
  • The December 2024 Joint Committee decision introducing one-way "permeability" between the old and new rules
  • How to read the country matrix showing which trading partners are on the old rules, the new rules, or both

For a broader overview of the topic, please watch the full recording. The slides are available in the Resources section.

Please note that this summary was generated using AI, based on the recording and available slides.