What is ROO ?

There are basically two sets of rules of origin for determining country of origin in the EU (and these terms may apply to other situations):

• Non-preferential Rules of Origin
• Preferential Rules of Origin

Non-preferential

Non-preferential Rules of Origin (RoO) is used to determined the country of origin for certain purposes. These purposes may be for quotas, anti-dumping, anti-circumvention, statistics or origin labelling.

The basis for the non-preferential RoO comes originates from the Kyoto-convention which states that if a product is wholly obtained or produced completely within one country the product shall be deemed having origin in that country. For products which has been produced in more than one country the product shall be determined to have origin in the country where the last substantial transformation took place.

To determine exactly what is last substantial transformation three general rules are applied: 1. change of tariff classification (on any level, even though 4-digit level is the most common 2. value added-rule (ad-valorem) 3. special processing rule, the minimum transformation is described. For instance, in the EU non-preferential Rules of Origin for T-shirts (HS6109) the origin is supposed to be in the country where the complete making-up was done.

It is important to remember that according to the non-preferential RoO a product does always have an origin and only one origin. It is however also important to remember that the non-preferential RoO may differ form country to country meaning that the same product may have different origins depending on which country's scheme is applied. For the above mentioned trade policy instrument it is always that importing country's RoO that are applied.

Preferential