Brussels, 27/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission's 2012 report on the obstacles to trade and investment stresses the general persistence of obstacles to access to the markets of the EU's principal partner countries for its businesses and exports.
This second report, which was published on Monday 27 February and compiled by the European executive on obstacles to trade and investment on the markets of six strategic partners of the EU - China, the United States, India, Japan, Mercosur (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) and Russia - lists notable successes in the dismantling of certain obstacles since 2011, such as the removal, in India, on export restrictions on cotton and safety requirements for telecommunications materials. Progress has also been noted, still in India, on sanitary and phytosanitary rules, in China on the local innovation policy and export restrictions on raw materials, in Japan on access to public procurement markets and regulatory requirements for medical devices and in the United States on the 100% scanning rule for containers and the Buy American regulations.
However, the report stresses the general persistence of obstacles to the access of European businesses to key markets. For example, no positive developments have been observed in many of the 21 cases noted in the first edition of the report in 2011, such as the cases of the ICT investment and security catalogue in China, financial services in Japan, restrictions in maritime transport and export restrictions on raw materials in Argentina and Brazil, import licences in Argentina and the preferential margin of 25% in public procurement contracts in Brazil.
One section of the report is specifically devoted to Russia, whose recent accession to the WTO may bring about the removal of selected obstacles identified last year as priorities (trade-related investment measures in the sector of motorised vehicles and their components, customs practices, intellectual property issues and sanitary and phytosanitary issues).
The report also lists six new priorities for obstacles to trade and investment to be dismantled, specifically the national security re-examination mechanism to which mergers and acquisitions involving foreign investors are subject, and the funding of and subsidies to export in China, national manufacturing policy in India, the tax on industrial products and procedures regarding imports of clothing and textiles in Brazil and restrictions in the reinsurance services sector in Argentina.
Finally, the report lays emphasis on the recent creation of industrial policies restricting trade in the emerging economies. These restrictions take the form of local content requirements in investment policy and public procurement, heavy requirements for standardisation and conformity assessment, effective measures tantamount to quantitative import restrictions and export restrictions on raw materials in particular. (EH/transl.fl)