Exporters unhappy with third-party national legislation can turn to the European Commission for help

Exporters faced with violations of international trade laws, can turn to the European Commission for dispute settlement, according to the Trade Barriers Regulation (TBR).

• What is the TBR?

The TBR is a legal instrument which grants European companies, states, industries and their associations the right to file a complaint with the commission, which will examine it to determine if there is evidence of violation of the international trade rules. The tool is intended to ensure that rights granted by the EU are complied with, when non-EU member countries "enact or maintain trade barriers".

The TBR is specifically designed to remove obstacles to trade in third countries for exporters, and is the only commercial policy tool that allows an individual company to file a complaint with the European Commission.

• Beneficiaries and applicability:

The beneficiaries of this instrument are EU companies or associations whose trade operations are negatively affected by the presence of trade barriers (e.g. specific laws or regulations etc) adopted by a third country.

This tool applies to goods, services, and intellectual property rights, if regulations concerning any of the former have been violated, and if such violations fall under the provisions of exchanges between the European Union and a third party state.

• The TBR procedure

If an exporter was affected by a trade barrier, it can initiate a formal procedure to the Division of the Commission which is charged with trade barriers - the Directorate-General for Trade.

Complaints can be submitted against the following types of trade barriers:

1995 a third country has introduced a trade barrier which harms exports of EU-member countries;

1996 a third country has introduced a trade barrier which harms the EU market. This is the case when a trade barrier prevents the EU from obtaining a basic product it needs.

Once the Commission has received the formal complaint, the first step will be to forward the complaint to the EU member states, which will then send their comments back to the Commission. The Commission will have 45 days from the submission of the Complaint to decide whether the complaint is admissible. This deadline can be extended upon request of the concerned party, if it needs more time to provide additional information. If the Commission estimates that there is enough evidence to justify the opening of an examination procedure and that it is in the interest of the Community, it will open an investigation. At the same time, the decision of the Commission will be published in the Official EU Journal, to notify all the potentially interested parties of the trade barriers and especially of which country introduced them. The investigation will take at most 5 months, or up to seven months if the case is extremely complex. The Commission will also draw up a report on the investigation, which will be presented to the Member States.