61.The Agreement also allows the United Kingdom and Tunisia to recognise as products originating in the United Kingdom or Tunisia products originating in the EFTA countries (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), Turkey and other parties to the PEM23 Agreement. The list of countries where working and processing can be considered “working and processing” in the United Kingdom or Tunisia is more limited. For the United Kingdom, it includes, in addition to the EU and Tunisia, Iceland, Norway, Morocco and Algeria. For Tunisia, only working or processing carried out in the United Kingdom, the EU, Morocco or Algeria can be considered as originating in Tunisia. These broader provisions on cumulation are subject to the existence of free trade agreements between the parties concerned. You can obtain certificates of origin a posteriori from your usual supplier as soon as the contract takes effect. The Government of the United Kingdom has reserved for itself powers in matters of international trade and international agreements, as well as the right and power to legislate on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty on all matters, but the Government of the United Kingdom will normally seek the approval of the deputy Parliament (centres) when areas falling under the agreement(s) Matters with decentralised competence come into conflict, regardless of their ability to legislate. 27.The previous agreement of the agreement between the United Kingdom and Georgia is the EU-Georgia Association Agreement9, which entered into force in 2016. The UK agreement regulates the trade provisions of the EU agreement, contains all customs duties and quotas on goods and contains provisions on services, intellectual property, geographical indications and government procurement. The agreement also includes obligations for cooperation in areas such as foreign, political and security issues. 9.To close the gap between what could have been a no-deal withdrawal on 31 October 2019 and the parties` ability to provisionally apply the agreement, the UK and SACUM countries have agreed on a non-binding agreement.
The MoU was a precautionary measure to ensure the continuity of trade. It would have confirmed the parties` intention to apply the EU-SADC EPA accordingly for the period between the end of the application of the EU Agreement to the United Kingdom and the entry into force of the Agreement between the United Kingdom and sacum4. In the end, the MoU was not necessary. We reiterate, however, the point raised in our “Review of International Agreements” report: to draw lessons from the fact that, in such circumstances, the invocation of a MoU “blurs the lines between a legally binding international agreement and a politically binding agreement and raises concerns about the lack of control of moUs”. 5 Cumulation of origin means that a good originating in one partner country may be processed or added to a product of another partner country and that it remains considered to be “originating” in that second partner country for the purposes of a given trade agreement. 40.We welcome the Government`s provision of detailed information on the geographical extension of the agreements, which specifies the elements that would apply to Gibraltar and the Crown Dependencies. We also welcome the minister`s confirming that “we now share the text of the agreements, once they are stable, with the DAs [decentralised administrations]”. While FCO officials have meanwhile said that regular meetings have been held with the decentralised administrations on the agreement, they have not confirmed that the text of the agreement was also shared with the decentralised administrations before the signing. Our views on this matter are set out in paragraph 24 above….
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