Chapter 2 Foreign Trade System and Law

2.1 Anti-dumping

Greece, as an EU member, follows the European legislation in the matter. The Greek anti-dumping committee works in close collaboration with the European authorities. The applicable law in the matter closely follows WTO legislation, in specific the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994（the Anti-dumping Agreement）.

A company is said to dump goods in the EU region, hence in Greece, if it exports a product to the EU at prices lower than the normal value of the product（the domestic price of the product or its cost of production）on its own domestic market. The European Commission is responsible for investigating allegations of dumping by exporting producers in non-EU countries. An investigation is set in motion when the Commission receives a complaint from the Community producers of the product concerned. It may also commence an investigation of its own motion.

The Commission publishes a note in the EU's Official Journal when it launches opening an anti-dumping investigation. An investigation must be completed in 15 months and the detailed findings are published in the Official Journal, for example, as a regulation imposing anti-dumping duties or terminating the proceeding without duties being imposed.

During an investigation, the EU must establish that

· there is dumping by the exporting producers in the country/countries concerned；

· material injury has been suffered by the Community industry concerned；

· there is a causal link between the dumping and such material injury；

· the imposition of measures is not against the Community interest.

Where these conditions are met, the Commission may impose anti-dumping measures on imports of the relevant product. Usually, these measures take the form of an ad valorem duty, but they could also be specific duties, which must be paid by the importer in the EU and collected by the national customs authorities. Alternatively, exporting producers may offer“price undertakings”. Such offers may take the form of offering to sell at a minimum price. If the offer is accepted, then anti-dumping duties are not collected on imports. However, the Commission is not obliged to accept such an offer of an undertaking.

The reasoning behind imposing a duty is to cure the effects of dumping on imports of a particular product. An assessment is also made regarding the level of duty needed to remove the injurious effects of dumping. Measures are imposed at the level of dumping or injury, whichever is lower.

In principle, measures are imposed for five years and may be subject to review. For instance, the circumstances of the exporters may have changed, or new exporting producers may request an accelerated review, if they feel this will help their case. Measures automatically lapse after five years, unless there is an expiry review.

Importers may also request a full or partial refund of duties paid, if they feel they have been harmed disproportionately. In particular, importers of products subject to anti-dumping duties can ask for a refund of duties paid when they can demonstrate that the dumping margin, on the basis of which the duties were paid, has been eliminated or reduced to a level which is below the level of the duty in force. For Greece, the importers must address their request to the domestic authorities if they paid the duties in the country. The authorities will then transmit the requests to the European Commission for further investigation.

2.2 Anti-subsidy rules

The Greek anti-subsidy rules follow the relevant EU regulation（Council Regulation（EC）No. 597/2009）, which defines a subsidy as“a financial contribution made by（or on behalf of）a government or a public body which confers a benefit to the recipient”.

The EU's anti-subsidy rules are based on a 1994 WTO agreement which allows remedial action to be taken against subsidies that are considered an unfair trade practice. The rules contain:

· the definition of a subsidy；

· criteria for determining whether imports of subsidised products are causing injury to the EU industry；

· procedures for initiating and conducting investigations；

· rules on the implementation and duration of countervailing measures.

The EU may impose a countervailing duty to offset the benefit of such a subsidy if it is limited to a specific firm, industry or group of firms or industries. Export subsidies and subsidies contingent on the use of domestic over imported goods are deemed to be specific.

Subsidies as a whole can be used to achieve different purposes. For instance, to pursue domestic and social policies, to foster production or exports, to create jobs, to facilitate the creation and expansion of new industries or to support economic activities that might otherwise fail. Yet, they may distort competition by making subsidized goods artificially competitive against non-subsidised goods. This negatively affects competitors since the products become unreasonably cheaper.

For instance, if a non-EU country subsidizes its domestic producers of a certain product, these producers can reduce their export prices to the EU market, artificially increase capacity or improve the quality of their product by investing more on research.

When an EU industry considers that imports of a product from a non-EU country are subsidized and injure the EU industry that produces a like product, they can lodge a complaint with the EU Commission. If the complaint discloses prima facie evidence of subsidy and injury, the Commission must open an anti-subsidy investigation. The main questions that the investigation must address are：

· Do the imports benefit from a countervailable subsidy?

· Is any injury suffered by the EU industry?

· Is there a causal link between the injury and the subsidised imports?

· Is the imposition of measures not against the Community interest?

If the investigation establishes subsidy and injury, the Commission may, within nine months of launching the investigation, impose provisional countervailing measures, i. e. a temporary security or bond on the imports concerned.

The investigation will substantiate whether definitive measures are warranted. If so, the Commission must impose them within 13 months. Such measures may be effective for a period of five years. See below for further on the effective period.

The three basic forms of countervailing duties are：

·ad valorem duty:a percentage of the net, free-at-EU frontier（CIF）price. This is the most common duty；

·specific duty:a fixed value for a certain amount of goods, e. g. EUR 1,000 per tone of a product；

·variable duty connected to a minimum import price（MIP）:importers in the EU do not pay a countervailing duty if the foreign exporter's export price to the EU is higher than the MIP.

Upon successful application, the authorities could also recognise a company-specific price undertaking. This is a commitment by an exporter to respect minimum import prices. This is not meant to fix prices at specific levels, rather to prevent them from falling below a certain floor price.

Price undertakings are governed by Article 13 of the basic anti-subsidy regulation（which draws on Article 18 of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures）. Further, special rules for developing countries are contained in Article 27 of the WTO Agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures.

In terms of monitoring the measures in force, anti-subsidy duties are collected by customs authorities of EU countries. The Commission monitors import volumes and prices of all products subject to measures, to identify and to react to circumvention and other irregularities. In doing so, it collaborates with various bodies, like the customs authorities of EU countries, the Commission tax and customs department, and the European fraud prevention agency（OLAF）.

In principle, measures are imposed for five years. However, any interested party（EU countries, importers, exporters, the authorities of the exporting country）may request an interim review if they have prima facie evidence that the measures are no longer needed or that they are no longer sufficient to counteract subsidised injurious imports.

In the final year of application of the measures, the Community producers may ask the Commission to conduct an expiry review to determine whether the expiry of the measures would be likely to lead to a continuation or recurrence of subsidisation and injury. In such a case, the measures may continue for another five years.

Importers can also request a refund of the duties paid when they think that the amount of subsidy has been reduced or eliminated.

2.3 Market access

International trade is hampered by barriers existing in domestic regulations which inhibit investments. To overcome this hurdle, various tools such as the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index（STRI）provides adequate information and tools that can be used to compare policies among different countries. This information is valuable, inter alia, to policy analysts and makers, governmental officials, traders, practitioners and the general public. The STRI provides objective data with regard to trade restrictiveness and identification of best practices. The index therefore creates a benchmark for governments and can be used as a tool by trade negotiators to identify bottlenecks and warn businesses about the pitfalls that exist when they wish to enter foreign markets.

The STRI is impartial and thus makes no recommendations to countries, but rather presents the data that can be used should a country wants guidance in prioritizing domestic reform efforts. The STRI does not prescribe solutions, its primary aim being to help governments identify their desired fields of improvement, and suggest paths for this to materialise. One could say that it is a self-detection tool, and every step following the diagnosis rests with the government.

Accessing markets outside the EU is crucial for jobs and growth within the EU. The EU works to keep markets open and to keep trade flowing through a variety of specific trade policies. This is important to the EU since：

·An open and fair international trading system is one of the foundations of Europe's competitiveness.

·Market barriers in EU exports in other countries accounts for the bulk of restrictiveness. Its leading trading partners are less open than the EU, sometimes significantly so.

·The EU stands to gain from the further opening of markets worldwide.

·Europe's market must be open to supplies of intermediary goods and raw materials for European producers of value-added products. Restricting this flow of goods raises costs for European companies, making them less competitive:the EU needs to import to export.

·The EU has consistently removed these barriers to its own economy and now has one of the most open markets in the world.

Greece does not have a particular policy on market access, but rather follows the relevant EU policy. Since the EU has 15 percent share of world trade for goods and 22.7 percent share of world trade for services, it is a powerhouse that aspires to open markets even more.

The EU wishes to improve the terms of trade around the world through various sectoral policies. In fact, the EU aims to reduce the barriers to the flow of goods and services in the EU's export markets. This strategy targets and removes individual barriers in key export markets. Towards this direction, the EU negotiates the removal of tariff barriers and non-tariff barriers such as technical barriers to trade and sanitary and phytosanitary measures with key partners.

The EU further wants to access government procurement markets around the world on fair terms, and aims to ensure the right balance on intellectual property protection for the EU's innovative output. The EU is developing its rules on investment, which is central to the ability of EU companies to operate effectively in other markets. It defends the functioning of the EU market against unfair distortions, such as dumping or subsidies. When international trade rules are breached the EU takes action through bilateral dispute settlement provisions, WTO-specific dispute settlement procedures or through specific investment dispute provisions.

In terms of steps forward, the EU annually publishes a trade and investment barriers report, which describes the progress achieved in dismantling barriers to the markets of the EU's six strategic economic partners, namely China, India, Japan, Mercosur, Russia and the US. The EU overall perceives that trade barriers greatly resist European businesses that wish to access the markets of these strategic partners.

2.4 The rise of regional trade agreements

A regional trade agreement（RTA）enables its treaty parties to emulate a successful path toward trade liberalization and foreign investment. In light of the inertia of the ongoing Doha Round, RTA negotiations are looking better than stalled international rounds. RTAs can be concluded quickly; they offer significant financial benefits; and they are strategic.

A free trade agreement（FTA）is an international treaty that removes barriers to trade and facilitates commercial and investment ties. It promotes economic convergence between countries and can have a wide reach depending on the participating states. Recently concluded FTAs have five pillars：

（ⅰ）elimination of tariff and trade barriers for goods；

（ⅱ）opening up of trade in services；

（ⅲ）legal reform that facilitates greater ties；

（ⅳ）extensive incentives for investment；

（ⅴ）establishment of Investor State Dispute Settlement（ISDS）mechanisms to safeguard the effectiveness and implementation of the FTA.

Implementing these principles works. A statistical analysis of several FTAs concluded in recent decades found that an FTA between two countries will, on average, increase those countries' trade about 86 percent after 15 years of implementation.

Regional trade agreements（RTAs）have been gaining special momentum as more and more nations aspire to conclude them. As of 15 June 2014,585 notifications of RTAs（counting goods, services and accessions separately）were received by the GATT/WTO, out of which 379 were in force. Several of them are currently under negotiation. For instance, the EU is currently actively pursuing the Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership（TTIP）with the US, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement（CETA）with Canada, and the Trade in Services Agreement（TiSA）with 23 WTO members that together account for 70 percent of world trade in services.

2.5 Technical barriers to trade

Technical requirements exist in all sectors of the economy and have an impact on most products. The labelling of the food, the safety of toys, the technical specification of the cars, and the energy efficiency of home appliances, are some examples of standards that need to be met.

Hence, “technical barriers to trade”（TBT）refers to mandatory technical regulations and voluntary standards that define specific characteristics that a product should have, such as its size, shape, design, labelling/marking/packaging, functionality or performance. These procedures are used to test whether a product complies with specific requirements, as provided in the TBT. These“conformity assessment procedures”can include, product testing, inspection and relevant certification activities.

Government authorities introduce TBTs with a legitimate public policy objective. They, for instance, wish to protect human health and safety, animal and plant life and health or the environment, or to safeguard consumers from deceptive practices. TBTs often have an impact on trade and the competitiveness of exporters, particularly small and medium enterprises（SMEs）. Adjusting products and production processes to comply with different requirements in export markets increase product costs and time-to-market, and can hurt the competitiveness of EU exporters.

The WTO/TBT Agreement is a preventive instrument that ensures that TBT measures do not result in discrimination or arbitrary restrictions on international trade. The Agreement does not undermine the right of governments to take measures to pursue legitimate public policy objectives. It simply aims to ensure that such measures are prepared, adopted and applied according to basic principles, in order to minimize the negative impact this has on trade.

The significance of technical barriers to trade has increased considerably over the years, as tariffs steadily decline and governments worldwide introduce more and more regulatory requirements to address health, safety or environmental concerns. The TBT Agreement is an important tool with which the EU can tackle technical barriers to trade and address requirements of third countries that might pose significant problems to European economic operators.

In the WTO, the EU has pushed for greater harmonisation through widespread use of international standards. The EU has also tried to adopt a more risk-oriented approach in deciding what conformity assessment procedures should be used for assessing compliance of products. To do so, it must improve the implementation of trans-parency provisions, ensure that trade partners are systematically consulted on regulatory initiatives that might influence trade and promote the effectiveness of technical assistance to developing countries in the TBT field.

A central EU objective in the TBT is to facilitate exports by EU manufacturers by reducing technical barriers which unnecessarily restrict trade in global markets.

The main principles of the TBT Agreement, that Greece is following under the EU umbrella, that subsequently enforces the WTO principles, are：

·Transparency: a WTO member that plans to introduce a measure that can potentially have an important impact on trade should notify the WTO about this, and take into account comments submitted by other countries on the draft legislation；

·Non-discrimination and national treatment: a measure must not discriminate among different importing members and should apply in the same way to both imports and similar domestic goods；

·Proportionality: a measure should not be more trade restrictive than necessary to achieve the legitimate goal pursued；

·Use of international standards:in every possible situation, international standards should be the basis for technical regulations；

·Equivalence: WTO members should consider accepting technical regulations of other members as equivalent to their own, provided that these measures are an effective way of addressing the objectives pursued.

2.6 Sanitary and phytosanitary（SPS）measures

Sanitary and phytosanitary（SPS）measures are often necessary to protect human, animal and plant life or health, especially to protect them from risks arising from imported goods. Such measures should be based on the WTO/SPS Agreement, international standards, recommendations or guidelines or be based on scientific principles. However, third countries often impose unjustified SPS measures in a way that the SPS measure negatively affects the EU exports of agriculture and fishery products.

This section outlines relevant food laws applicable to the importation of products into the European Union. The EU implemented a comprehensive legislative frame-work covering all stages of the production, processing, distribution and placing on the market of food intended for human consumption, which is subject to the supervision of EU and member state authorities. Generally, food products imported into the EU have to comply with general food safety requirements; be produced under hygienic conditions; meet certain composition criteria; be below specific residue limits; and be appropriately labelled and appropriately packaged.

First, with respect to food safety, the most relevant laws are：

·Regulation（EC）No.178/2002（the“General Food Law Regulation”）;

·Regulation（EC）No.852/2004（the“General Food Hygiene Regulation”）;

·Regulation（EC）No.396/2005（the“Maximum Residue Regulation”）; and

· Regulation（EC）No. 2703/2005（the“Microbiological Criteria Regulation”）.

In general, EU law draws a distinction between food of animal origin（carrying a higher risk for public health, and therefore being subject to strict regulations）and food of non-animal origin（for which the regulatory landscape is less strict）. In practice, the distinction is not clear. In fact, there are products, which contain components that belong to both categories. These products are categorized as“composite products”, which have to comply with legislation regulating food of animal origin and legislation regulating food of non-animal origin.

Second, EU labelling requirements are subject to the following rules and regulations：

·General Food Law Regulation；

·Regulation（EU）No.1169/2011（the“Food Information Regulation”）；

·Regulation（EC）No.1924/2006（the“Nutritional and Health Claims Regula-tion”）; and

·Regulation（EU）No.432/2012（the“Permitted Health Claims Regulation”）.

Finally, EU packaging requirements are governed by the following laws：

·General Food Law Regulation；

·Directive 94/62/EC（the“Packaging Directive”）；

·Regulation（EC）No.1935/2004（the“Framework FCM Regulation”）;

·Regulation（EU）No.10/2011（the“Plastics FCM Regulation”）;

· Regulation（EC）No. 282/2008（the “Recycled Plastics FCM Regulation”）.

At EU level, the European Food Safety Authority（EFSA）, established by the General Food Law Regulation, is the central agency conducting risk assessments regarding food and feed safety. In close collaboration with national authorities, EFSA provides independent scientific advice and communication on existing and emerging risks.

However, the national competent authorities carry out the majority of the control activities to ensure compliance with food safety regulations. Food business operators are required to collaborate with the national competent authorities on action taken to avoid or reduce risks posed by a food which they supply or have supplied. Domestic authorities in Greece therefore ensure that these requirements are met.

2.6.1 Regulation in Greece

In Greece, several ministries are in charge of food issues, mainly the Ministry of Rural Development & Food, the Ministry of Health & Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Development, Competitiveness & Shipping. However, food safety and consumer protection is the primary responsibility of Food Control Authority（ΕΦΕΤ）, which is supervised by the Ministry of Health & Social Solidarity, is the contact point for the European food authorities and the Codex Alimentarius Commission.

Another important authority is the General State Chemical Laboratory（ΓΧΚ）, established in 1929 within the Ministry of Finance, with a wide spectrum of activities, such as conducting samplings and laboratory tests on various food including alcohol drinks, granting approvals for new, functional food products and offering technical-scientific support to other authorities. Moreover, the Supreme Chemical Council（AXΣ）, аn organ of General State Chemical Laboratory, carries out significant legislative work on issues of food composition and food distribution. Worth mentioning is the National Organisation for Medicines（ΕΟΦ）, which has exclusive competence in respect of food supplements and dietetic foods.

In Greece, the regulatory framework for food & beverage is based on EU regulations and directives that are implemented through national by-laws, namely ministerial decisions and presidential decrees. Country specific regulations apply in situations where the EU law may be incomplete or absent or allow the member states to make exceptions.

The basic national regulatory law is the Code of Foodstuffs, Beverages and Objects of Common Use（ΚΤΠ, hereafter referred to as the“Food Code”）, which was introduced in 1971 and codified by the Ministerial Decision 1100/1987, subject to numerous amendments due to developments in EU and international law, containing general-horizontal und product specific-vertical provisions. Other significant laws are the Market Law Regulation 7/2009, the Ministerial Decision 15523/2006, which is the main act implementing the EU hygiene package, and the Sanitary Regulation Α1β/8577/1983.

At national regulatory level, general and specific requirements on food hygiene are stipulated in the Sanitary Regulation Α1β/8577/1983. This law applies to companies acting in the sector of retail and wholesale trade of food（supermarkets, cash & carry shops, wholesale centres, bakeries, fast food shops, restaurants, entertainment shops, etc.）. It will be soon replaced by a new sanitary regulation that fully complies with the respective EU hygiene standards.

National guides to good practice drawn up for every single food business sector and officially approved by the competent authority（ΕΦΕΤ or the Ministry of Rural Development & Food）in order to comply with the hygiene requirements deserve consideration. This refers especially to food hygiene aspects that are not explicitly or specifically regulated.

In Greece, food labelling regulations are, to a great part, harmonised with EU law. The provisions in Arts. 11 and 11a of Food Code regarding the general labelling requirements comply with the prescriptions of Directive 2000/13/EC, Directive 90/496/EEC, and other related EU Directives. The use of Greek language is obligatory;multi-language labelling is permitted.