Mapping Preferential Agreements in SAP GTS

The EU's preferential agreements with third countries are mapped as legal regulations in SAP GTS. However, you do not have to define a separate legal regulation for each agreement. Instead, you can group agreements with identical rules of origin into a single legal regulation. This legal regulation then represents a cumulation zone, that is, a network of countries with identical rules of origin.

For example, you can take advantage of the system of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) cumulation in this grouping of agreements. In this cumulation zone, materials originating in one of the participating countries may be used without sufficient working or processing if the originating product produced from these materials is exported to another country in the network.

As a prerequisite for the development and extension of this cumulation system, the EU and its partner states in the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean area, abbreviated to PEM area, have already largely harmonized the rules of origin in bilateral preferential agreements.

With the Regional Convention, adopted in the EU on 1 May 2012, the EU intended to standardize and to simplify the rules of origin in the PEM area. The rules of origin laid down in an amended version of the convention will successively replace the approximately 60 bilateral origin protocols within the scope of the PEM cumulation zone.

Some data providers sell complete lists of working and processing in XML format for upload to SAP GTS. This upload largely saves you the system configuration described in this unit. However, you cannot influence the mapping of the agreements and their rule sets in the system.

To upload preferential agreements and their rules of origin from XML files to your SAP GTS system, you can use the Load Preference Rules from XML File transaction (transaction code /SAPSLL/PREF_RLS_UPL).

The rule sets of some of the newer preferential agreements differ significantly from the rule set of the Regional Convention and the older bilateral agreements, in particular the Agreement between the European Union and Japan for an Economic Partnership (EPA) and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) between the European Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Legal regulations for preference processing have to be activated for combinations of country groups. Each of these country groups represents a signatory to the agreement. For example, the legal regulation ZRC for mapping the Regional Convention is activated for the combination of a country group for the EU and another country groups for the other Contracting Parties. Both country groups are assigned to the legal regulation (dialog structure of the definition of legal regulations, folder Assignment of Country Groups).

Regardless of which preferential agreements you map in SAP GTS, you have to create country groups for the respective signatories and assign these country groups to the appropriate legal regulations for the preferential agreements. This also applies if a single state is a contracting party to the EU. For example, if you want to map the EU's free trade agreement with the Republic of Korea as a legal regulation, you define a new country group whose only member is the Republic of Korea (SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA→General Settings→Legal Regulations→Define Country Group).

You also assign countries to country groups in Customizing (SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA→General Settings→Legal Regulations→Assign Countries to Country Group).