Chinese exported textile products blocked at the ports of the EU will be released today (September 14) under the new regulation formulated by EU''''s administrative arm European Commission (EC).

The two countries had agreed that the deadline for importers to request the issue of import licences for goods shipped from China before July 20 has been extended until September 20, which should allow parties to have the clearest possible picture of the number of license applications pending. After that date, no such requests will be considered.

According to the new regulation, the import levels have been modified to provide sufficient amounts to enable the import of all the blocked quantities (estimated at 87 million pieces).

Half of this amount will be unblocked through flexibilities agreed with China: transfer of agreed quantities from 2006 into 2005 in categories 6 (trousers) and 31 (brassieres) to clear totally the pending goods, as well as partially (up to 5% of the 2006 level) for category 5 (pullovers); and for the other categories and for the rest of the amounts needed for category 5, the amounts will be transferred from the 2005 quantities of category 2 (cotton fabrics).

The other half of the quantities needed are being provided by a unilateral increase of the import levels on the European side through the provision of additional quantities.

In order to avoid any possible further problems of blockages this year a number of measures have been taken, which include the additional quantities provided by the EU have been rounded up in order to have an extra security margin.

A reserve of 2073 tons in category 2, which China agreed to provide from the 2005 levels, will provide a reserve which can be used by the Commission to transfer from category 2 into other categories amounts that may be necessary.

In addition, flexibility provisions allowing 5% of advance use, 7% of carry over from previous years, and 4% of inter-category transfer among certain product categories, have been introduced.

These flexibility provisions will be available also in 2006 and 2007, thus enabling a better management of the agreed levels. 

Source:textile.2456.com