From ECTA’s fresh flash No. 03-09, comes news that EU Taxation and Customs Commissioner Mr. Kovacs, signed an action plan with the Chinese Ambassador Song to strengthen customs cooperation on protecting Intellectual Property Rights, only 3 days ago. According to the newsflash, “the agreement on an action plan for closer customs cooperation between the EU and China on IPR enforcement gives a clear signal at political level of the EU’s willingness to support China’s efforts in this area. Conversely, the degree of commitment that China will devote to implementing the action plan will be a measure of its determination to cooperate internationally in order to achieve measurable reductions in counterfeit and piracy”.

The action plan seems ambitious enough: It entails the creation of a working group to study the flow of counterfeit goods between China and the EU (did anyone say the word commitology?); the exchange of information and officials, operational cooperation between key ports and airports, and – interestingly enough – developing partnerships with the private sector in China in order to better target suspect shipments.

Further, the parties signed an (equally important) agreement on preventing illicit imports of chemical substances used for synthetic drug production

The relevant communication can be found here. The full and very interesting ECTA flash can be found here