The company has been exporting this nonwoven fabric to the European market, the customer requires to provide a Certificate of Origin (C/O) in the form EUR.1, under the EVFTA Trade Agreement. However, after researching and studying related documents, there are some issues that Mr. Tam does not understand clearly about the conditions for meeting the rules as follows:

According to the Appendix II of Circular No. 11/2020/TT-BCT dated June 15, 2020 stipulating the rules of origin of goods in the EVFTA, non-woven fabrics coded 5603 has origin criteria of “Extruded into man-made fibers, or using natural fibers, accompanied by non-woven techniques, including needle piercing.

Mr. Tam asked, in this case, does your company meet the rules of origin of the EUR.1 form for finished nonwoven fabrics coded 5603?

The Ministry of Industry and Trade responded to this issue as follows:

Criteria of origin of fabric products coded 5603

According to the first EVFTA Protocol and Circular No. 11/2020/TT-BCT dated June 15, 2020 of the Ministry of Industry and Trade regulating the rules of origin of goods in the Free Trade Agreement between Vietnam and the European Union, the processing stage to determine the origin of fabric products (code 5603) is "Extruding into man-made fibers, or using natural fibers, accompanied by non-woven techniques, including needle piercing".

Information on the production of fabric products (code 5603)

According to the enterprise's reflection, the production process of spunbond nonwoven fabric is done entirely in Vietnam but does not include needle piercing, not by weaving or knitting.

Comparing the actual production of fabric items (code 5603) with the origin criteria in EVFTA, spunbond nonwoven fabric produced by modern technology does not meet the regulations to be granted a C/O EUR.1.

To solve this problem, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (Import and Export Department) discussed with the European Commission's (EC) about the fact that the rules of origin in the EVFTA for code 5603 reflect the production process which followed the previous technology at the EVFTA negotiation stage and it needs to be adjusted to match modern production reality.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade will update the information after Vietnam and the EC agree on an appropriate course of action in the context that the EVFT Agreement has not yet been revised.