The UK government has introduced a bill to help bring into force the UK-Australia and the UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreements (“FTAs“).
The bill is a key step in ratifying the FTAs but before they come into force, Parliament must scrutinise the FTAs, agree the bill and pass secondary legislation to make the changes required to the UK’s procurement regime to meet the terms of the FTAs.
The FTAs will remove tariffs on all goods exported from the UK, provided that they meet the relevant rules of origin. The relevant rules of origin for the UK-Australia FTA are available here and for the UK-New Zealand FTA are available here. These new rules of origin contain product-specific rules and require either that the producer or exporter provides a valid origin declaration or that the importer has knowledge that a product is originating.
The UK government expects that the UK-Australia and UK-New Zealand FTAs will boost the UK economy by £2.3 billion and £800 million respectively.
Author
Jennifer F. Revis
Jennifer Revis is a partner in Baker McKenzie's London office and co-leads our EMEA Customs Team.
Jennifer focuses her practice on the public regulation of international trade, particularly in a wide range of customs compliance issues. She regularly advises clients on import matters, including customs valuation, rules of origin, and classification. She has worked with clients designing and implementing their compliance programs, policies, procedures and risk assessments, and assisting them in customs audits. She has significant experience in managing global customs projects and disputes, particularly in the area of customs valuation (transfer pricing; assists; royalties). Jennifer also advises on FTAs and trade remedies matters.
Jennifer has been consistently recognised as a "Leading Individual" for Customs & Excise and “Next Generation Partner” for Trade, WTO Anti-Dumping And Customs. Clients describe her as "an outstanding customs lawyer and litigator with fantastic experience. She is also easy to work with and leads her team with aplomb", "without a doubt, one of the best customs lawyers in the business (…) with an exceptionally deep knowledge of customs valuation concepts, as well as considerable experience applying those concepts in a variety of jurisdictions."
Jennifer has been on secondment to the UK customs authorities (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) in their tax and excise litigation department and to the Firm's European Law Centre in Brussels.
