The World Trade Organization (WTO) members, observer organisations and the WTO Secretariat marked the 30th anniversary of the Agreement on Rules of Origin (RoO) on 04 April 2024 by highlighting the importance of the committee in ensuring transparency and certainty in global trade. Growing challenges such as the complexity and diversity of rules of origin, digital trade and artificial intelligence, as well as continued work on preferential rules of origin for least developed countries (LDCs), make the work of the WTO’s Committee on RoO (CRO) more relevant than ever, they said.
In her opening remarks to the anniversary event, the Deputy Director-General noted that the CRO, which first met 30 years ago, had been founded upon a clear vision: fostering international cooperation and facilitating trade through predictable, clear and harmonised RoO.
The DDG noted that the committee’s initial work was focused on negotiating harmonised RoO for all non-preferential purposes, i.e., for rules applicable to trade outside of regional and preferential trade agreements. While completion of the ambitious harmonisation objective has proven unattainable, “the objectives of the Agreement retain all their significance for members and business in today’s world,” the DDG said.
“Businesses navigating global trade need predictability and welcome greater simplicity and transparency,” DDG Ellard told the audience. “Transparency should, therefore, remain a central objective of this Committee, and I am glad to see recent work in this area, as well as the voluntary use of a new notification template.
“New technologies, digital trade procedures, blockchain technologies, and artificial intelligence open many new opportunities and challenges that could guide the work of this Committee”, the DDG continued. “In fact, in the past few years, we have seen an expansion of the Committee’s work, particularly on preferential rules of origin for least developed countries. There is great scope for members to learn from each other and improve their practices to facilitate trade.
“As members implement more detailed and complex rules of origin and control mechanisms, they must also strive for rules that facilitate trade,” the DDG said. “In this context, multilateral discussions within this committee are increasingly relevant.”
RoO are the criteria to define where a product is made for customs purposes. They are also important for implementing other trade policy measures, including trade preferences, quotas, marking, anti-dumping measures and countervailing duties.
Non-preferential RoO apply when trade is conducted on a most-favoured nation (MFN) basis. Preferential RoO are those that apply to reciprocal trade preferences (i.e., regional trade agreements or customs unions) or non-reciprocal preferences (i.e., preferences in favour of developing countries or LDCs).
The chair of the CRO of Malaysia said predictable and clear RoO are important for global trade.
“The necessity of our work is shown in the simplicity of our purpose to determine where a good is made,” the chair said. “So simple, but as the past 30 years have shown, so complex at the same time.”
The chair welcomed the CRO’s recent work on preferential RoO for least developed country members, a period of “some of the most extensive activity” from the committee.
While outlining the history of the negotiations that led to the agreement's conclusion and the CRO's subsequent work, the WTO Secretariat also paid tribute to trade negotiators, customs officials, international organisations and former chairs who dedicated many hours of work to the CRO.
He also emphasised that the current work of the Committee could be useful for all members: “The lessons learned from this work extend beyond the LDCs — for instance, our conversations about utilisation rates or trade facilitating practices that are conducive to the utilisation of preferences,” he said. “This is something that is not only useful in the context of non-reciprocal trade preferences for the LDCs, but it’s something that, if members want, could go beyond this and also be discussed in the context of preferential RoO used in (FTAs) as well.”
To conclude the event, the International Trade Centre gave an overview of statistics on the use of the World Trade Organization (WTO), WCO, International Trade Centre (ITC) “Origin Facilitator”, a publicly available global database on RoO.
CRO meeting
At its meeting on 03 April 2025, the CRO continued to review developments related to preferential rules of origin for LDCs. Japan provided additional information on its consignment obligations. The EU presented the functioning of its self-certification scheme and the operation of the “non-manipulation” principle. The People’s Republic of China updated the committee on introducing electronic certification for least developed countries (LDCs). The United Kingdom (UK) reported on the rates utilisation of its Developing Countries Trading Scheme.
Cambodia presented a new paper regarding differentiating utilisation rates of preferential trade arrangements for LDCs, while the LDC Group presented ongoing research concerning identifying specific cases of firms using cumulation in Africa. Cumulation refers to provisions allowing producers in one country to source parts and inputs from other countries without losing the originating status of that input.
The Secretariat provided an overview of notifications received on non-preferential rules of origin requirements. Switzerland and Vietnam were the first members to update their notifications using the new template proposed by the chair in November 2024. The Secretariat noted that 57 members apply non-preferential origin requirements, 61 do not, and 21 have not yet submitted any information.
Next meeting
The next formal CRO meeting will take place from 05 to 06 November 2025.