Provisional safeguard measures

Article 6    back to top

Under critical circumstances, defined as circumstances where delay would cause damage that would be difficult to repair, provisional measures may be imposed, on the basis of a preliminary determination that there is clear evidence that increased imports have caused or threaten to cause serious injury. Such measures should be in the form of refundable tariff increases, and may be kept in place for a maximum of 200 days. The period of application of any provisional measure must be included in the total period of application of a safeguard measure.

  

Special and differential treatment

Introduction    back to top

Developing country Members receive special and differential treatment with respect to other Members' safeguard measures, in the form of a de minimis import volume exemption. As users of safeguards, developing country Members receive special and differential treatment with respect to applying their own such measures, with regard to permitted duration of extensions, and with respect to re-application of measures.

  

De minimis import exemption    back to top

A safeguard measure shall not be applied to low volume from developing country Members. That is, where imports from a single developing country Member account for no more than 3 per cent of the total imports of the product concerned, and provided developing country Members below this threshold on an individual basis do not collectively account for more than 9 per cent of those imports, such imports shall be excluded from the measure.

  

Provisions affecting developing country Members as users of safeguard measures    back to top 

Duration of extensions of measures

In applying safeguard measures, developing country Members may extend the application of a safeguard for an extra two years beyond that normally permitted (i.e., to a total of six years, meaning that developing countries may apply a measure for a total of 10 years, as compared with the usual eight.   

Re-application of measures

The rules for re-applying safeguard measures with respect to a given product are relaxed for developing country Members. (The minimum period of non-application for developing countries in most cases is one-half the duration of the original measure, so long as this period is at least two years).

  

Pre-existing measures

Article XIX measures    back to top

Article XIX measures that were in effect at the time of the WTO Agreement's entry into force are to be terminated no later than eight years after they were first applied, or five years after the entry into force of the WTO Agreement, whichever comes later (Article 10).

  

“Grey area” measures    back to top

“Grey area” measures that were in effect at the time of the WTO Agreement's entry into force are to be brought into conformity with the SG Agreement or phased out - pursuant to timetables to have been presented to the SG Committee by 30 June 1995 —within four years of the WTO's entry into force (i.e., by 31 December 1998) (Article 11). Although all Members had the right to an exception with respect to a single specific measure, whereby they would have had until 31 December 1999 for the required phase-out, no Member other than the EC (whose single exception is contained in the Annex to the Agreement itself) exercised this option.