Trade

• Author: International Law Group

On February 27, 2004, the EU signed the Agreement between the European Community and the United States of America on the mutual recognition of certificates of conformity for marine equipment. The U.S. and the EU have decided that "mutual recognition" procedures will facilitate trade in technical equipment. The way it works is that recognized bodies in the exporting country certify the marine product's compliance with the importing country's regulatory and technical requirements.

The Agreement lays down the conditions under which the importing party's regulatory authority is to accept the certificates of conformity issued by the exporting party's conformity assessment bodies. Essentially, the technical requirements in both the U.S. and EU are presumed to be equivalent. Further, it provides a framework for regulatory cooperation between the U.S. and the EU for marine equipment. See Articles 2 and 4 of the Agreement.

Each party designates the qualified conformity assessment bodies (laboratories) that are qualified to review the technical conformity of the products to be traded (Article 6). To ensure proper functioning of the Agreement, the parties established a Joint Committee which will meet periodically and which may also set up Joint Working Groups (Article 7).

In Annex II, the Agreement lists the covered maritime products and it will be periodically updated. It contains products such as Lifebuoy self-activating smoke signals...