Approved exporter (EA) and registered exporter (REX):

A preference is a preferential treatment under customs law. This means that customs duties are lower or completely eliminated in the trade of goods. The preferential agreements of the European Union regulate for which goods and countries or groups of countries such preferences exist.

An example: Your company wants to export goods from the EU to Switzerland under a preferential agreement. In order for your goods to qualify for preferential customs treatment when they are imported into Switzerland, the importer must present a corresponding document of proof. As the exporter, you provide your trading partner in Switzerland with this proof document that the goods meet the relevant requirements.

The details may vary from agreement to agreement. But as a rule, the requirements are aimed at the origin of the goods. For example, it may be necessary for your company to prove that a product has been manufactured entirely in the European Union or has been sufficiently processed there.

This is done by means of a preference certificate. This is normally issued by the competent customs office or an approved authority. As a rule, this process can be simplified. Other preferential agreements only provide for the issuing of a preference document by the exporter without the involvement of an authority.

Approved exporters (EA) may, if the respective preferential agreement so provides:

• Issue preferential proofs regarding the origin of a good themselves. The value of the goods is not limited.
• issue pre-processed certificates in the trade of goods with Turkey (A.TR.).

If you wish to benefit from these advantages as an approved exporter, you must submit an application.

As an approved exporter, you must ensure through your internal organization that the preference certificates you issue comply with the requirements.

This is done by means of a working and organizational instruction (AuO), which you must submit to the main customs office together with the application. The AuO contains the following information, among other things:

• Person with overall responsibility
• Person responsible for preferential proofs
• Activities of the company: trade, production or both
• Procedure for checking the origin of goods
• Procedure for archiving the preference documents and related documentation.

Registered exporters (REX) may, if this procedure is provided for in the relevant preferential agreement:

• Issue preference proofs regarding the origin of a good themselves. The value of the goods is not limited.

To obtain the status of a registered exporter, you must submit an application for registration. There are no other requirements to be met.

Accounting segregation:

When manufacturing a product originating in the European Union, specified rules must be met. Only in this way is the manufactured product an originating product. It must always be possible to clearly prove which input materials have been used in the manufacture. Input materials which themselves already originate in the EU must be stored separately from the other input materials. However, some European Union preferential agreements provide for an exception.

Example: Your company manufactures goods from plastic granulate. In many cases, however, only a certain maximum quantity of the plastic granulate used may be an input material not originating in the EU, i.e. imported from China, for example. If you store plastic granulate not originating in the EU and plastic granulate originating in the EU in a common storage tank, then it is not possible to prove which granulate was used in the production. The respective proportion of materials with or without originating status in the EU could only theoretically be determined via the merchandise management system. However, this is only permissible if the accounting segregation method is used.

If the book segregation method is used, joint storage is possible with purely book segregated entry of certain input materials.
If you want to take advantage of this, you must submit an application.

As part of the application process, you must demonstrate how you will document and monitor the accounting segregation in such a way as to exclude the possibility of unlawful confirmation of originating status.