Mapping Preferential Agreements in SAP GTS

You map the EU's preferential agreements with third countries 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.

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).

If you decide to map preferential agreements manually, you first create the corresponding legal regulations in Customizing for SAP GTS (menu path: SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA → General Settings → Legal Regulations → Define Legal Regulation).

The delivery Customizing contains two legal regulations that you can use as templates for mapping the Pan-European and PEM cumulation zones. The legal regulation PANEG represents all agreements in which Pan-European cumulation can be used. The PNMED legal regulation is provided as a template for mapping the PEM cumulation zone.

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.

You always activate legal regulations for preference processing for combinations of country groups. Each of these country groups represents a party to the agreement. For example, the legal regulation ZEEA for mapping the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement is activated for the combination of a country group for the EU and another country group for the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). 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 signatory states 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 (menu path: SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA → General Settings → Legal Regulations → Define Country Group).

You also assign countries to country groups in Customizing (menu path: SAP Global Trade Services, edition for SAP HANA → General Settings → Legal Regulations → Assign Countries to Country Group). You can display the assignment of countries to country groups using the Display Country for Country Groups and Agreement app.