Objective
In the past decades, the EU has concluded preferential agreements with various countries and country groups. More agreements are under preparation.
While most agreements with countries outside of Europe focus on trade facilitation, most agreements with other European countries and the Mediterranean countries in North Africa and the Middle East also aim to deepen political cooperation. The contracting parties to the association agreements are moreover candidates for accession to the EU.
In 1997, the predecessor of the EU and some of its partners in Europe started harmonizing the rules of origin laid down in protocols to the individual preferential agreements. The partner states in North Africa and the Middle East and the successor states to former Yugoslavia later joined this process.
The participants in the harmonization process signed bilateral preferential agreements with identical rules of origin. In this way, they progressively created what is today referred to as the pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) area. However, this process has not yet been completed.
With the Regional Convention on pan-Euro-Mediterranean preferential rules of origin, the EU intended to further harmonize, but also to modernize and simplify, the existing rules of origin in the PEM area. By 31 December 2025, this convention will successively replace the approximately 60 bilateral origin protocols within the scope of the PEM area.