EU/Argentina Agreement: modification of concessions on all the tariff rate quotas included in the EU Schedule CLXXV as a consequence of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union

The European Parliament adopted by 604 votes to 52, with 37 abstentions, a legislative resolution on the draft Council decision on the conclusion, on behalf of the Union, of the Agreement in the form of an exchange of letters between the European Union and the Argentine Republic pursuant to Article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 relating to the modification of concessions on all the tariff rate quotas included in the EU Schedule CLXXV as a consequence of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union.

Following the recommendation of the Committee on International Trade, Parliament gave its consent to the conclusion of the agreement.

As a reminder, the EU formally launched the negotiation process (under Article XXVIII of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994) with several WTO members in Geneva in October 2018.

The negotiations are based on a ‘joint approach’ developed in 2017 by the EU and the UK on how to ‘apportion’ the quantitative commitments contained in the EU28 WTO schedule for the 143 EU agricultural, fish and industrial WTO tariff-rate quotas (TRQs).

The principle of the applied methodology is based on the trade flows into the EU27 and the UK during a representative reference period (of 3 years from 2013 to 2015) for all WTO TRQs. The agreed allocation method is described in detail in Regulation (EU) 2019/216 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

On 15 June 2018, the Council authorised the Commission to launch GATT Article XXVIII negotiations with the WTO Members concerned with a view to apportioning the Union's WTO tariff quota concessions.

Argentina has negotiating rights for 26 tariff quotas and consultation rights for 4 tariff quotas.

Negotiations with Argentina resulted in an agreement that was initialled on 5 February 2021 in Geneva.