Introduction

This article first examines the efforts made at a multilateral level to establish disciplines on rules of origin and the various techniques that may be used in drafting rules of origin. The second part discusses the role of origin rules in antidumping law and practice, with a focus on the European Union (EU) system. It analyzes the use of such rules as an operative tool during the investigative process and as an enforcement mechanism when antidumping measures are imposed. It concludes with an overview on the status of the Harmonization Work Programme (HWP) under the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Rules of Origin (ARO) and the recent proposals on anticircumvention made in the negotiating group on rules.

Although the use of harmonized nonpreferential origin rules in the context of antidumping proceedings remains a desirable goal, it should realistically go hand in hand with the establishment of third-country anticircumvention legislation.

Nonpreferential Rule of Origin and Methodologies for Drafting Rules of Origin

Efforts to Establish Multilateral Rules and Methodologies Used

The issue of rules of origin (as opposed to origin markings, to which Article IX of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade [GATT] is devoted, because of U.S. influence) did not attract much attention in the negotiation of the original GATT. On the contrary, during the second session of the Preparatory Committee in 1947, a subcommittee considered that “it is to be clear that it is within the province of each importing member to determine, in accordance with the provisions of its law, for the purpose of applying the most-favoured-nation (MFN) provision whether goods do in fact originate in a particular country.”