Regulation (EU) No 978/2012 of the European Parliament and of the CouncilShow full title

Article 9 U.K.

1. A GSP beneficiary country may benefit from the tariff preferences provided under the special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance referred to in point (b) of Article 1(2) if:

(a) it is considered to be vulnerable due to a lack of diversification and insufficient integration within the international trading system, as defined in Annex VII;

(b) it has ratified all the conventions listed in Annex VIII (the ‘relevant conventions’) and the most recent available conclusions of the monitoring bodies under those conventions (the ‘relevant monitoring bodies’) do not identify a serious failure to effectively implement any of those conventions;

(c) in relation to any of the relevant conventions, it has not formulated a reservation which is prohibited by any of those conventions or which is for the purposes of this Article considered to be incompatible with the object and purpose of that convention.

For the purposes of this Article, reservations shall not be considered to be incompatible with the object and purpose of a convention unless:

(i)

a process explicitly set out for that purpose under the convention has so determined; or

(ii)

in the absence of such a process, the Union where a party to the convention, and/or a qualified majority of Member States party to the convention, in accordance with their respective competences as established in the Treaties, objected to the reservation on the grounds that it is incompatible with the object and purpose of the convention and opposed the entry into force of the convention as between them and the reserving state in accordance with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties;

(d) it gives a binding undertaking to maintain ratification of the relevant conventions and to ensure the effective implementation thereof;

(e) it accepts without reservation the reporting requirements imposed by each convention and gives a binding undertaking to accept regular monitoring and review of its implementation record in accordance with the provisions of the relevant conventions; and

(f) it gives a binding undertaking to participate in and cooperate with the monitoring procedure referred to in Article 13.

2. Where Annex II is amended, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 36 to amend Annex VII in order to review the vulnerability threshold listed in point 1(b) of Annex VII so as to maintain proportionally the same weight of the vulnerability threshold as calculated in accordance with Annex VII.