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Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the Europen Union (EU) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) countries

Overview 

Namibia together with other SADC countries Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) signed the Economic Partnership Agreement (the EU-SADC EPA) with European Union in June 2016 which entered in force in October the same year. . The EPA came provisionally into force as of 10 October 2016, with Mozambique provisionally applying it since 4 February 2018.The EPA between the EU and the SADC EPA Group came into effect on the 10th October 2016. The EPA covers various subjects, tariff liberalisation on trade in goods, trade remedies, rules of origin, services, customs clearance, trade facilitation, sustainable development and development cooperation.  EU-SADC EPA agreement

Important issues to note include the following. 

  1. The Agreement guarantees duty-free, quota-free access to European markets for goods exported from Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini (BLNS countries) and for 98.7% of its goods imported South Africa into the EU.
  2. SADC EPA states provide the EU with lesser, varying degrees of market access. Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa have offered to liberalise around 86% of all their tariff lines and partially liberalise 12% of those, while 14% of the tariffs are excluded from liberalisation.
  3. Mozambique has offered to remove custom duties on 74% of its tariff lines for imports from the EU, excluding 26% of the tariff lines
  4. SADC EPA countries can activate five bilateral safeguards and increase import duties in case imports from the EU increase so much or so quickly that they threaten to disrupt domestic production
  5. The SADC EPA provides for Tariff Rate quotas (TRQs)  which is a combination of  import quotas (restrictions) and customs duties. Goods that partially duty free are subject to TRQs\imports with a predertermined quota (in-quota) are charged a lower tariff while imports outside the quota are charged higher tariffs. Products covered by TRQs include wheat, barley, cheese, pig fat, cereal based food preparations, pork, butter  and ice creams and mortadella Bologn

How to qualify for EPA Preferences for exports to the EU market

In order to qualify for preferential treatment,  export products to EU  will need to satisfy some set criteria namely; rules of origin, proof of origin, direct transport rule, product standards requirements and customs clearance documents and procedures.

  1. For rules of origin eligibility criteria please check the Protocol I concerning definition of the concept of "originating products" and methods of administrative cooperation. For a simpler explanation please check  “Rules of Origin Self-Assessment tool (ROSA)” in My Trade Assistant.  
  2. Proof of origin must be provided in form of either a movement certificate EUR.1 or an origin declaration by the exporter
  3. Direct transport rule. originating products must be transported from a SADC EPA State to EU (and vice-versa) without being further processed in a third country.
  4. Product requirements in the form of technical rules and requirements and health and safety requirements SPS. Search for the specific standards, health, safety and SPS rules applicable to your product and its country of origin in the My Trade Assistant database
  5. Custom clearance documents and procedures applicable on export to EU.

More information on exporting from the EU and importing into the EU can be found here  https://trade.ec.europa.eu/access-to-markets/en/home and for agricultural products www.agrinfo.eu, 

Useful links and documents