The 8th EU-China IPR Customs Working Group Meeting
The 8th EU-China IPR Working Group Meeting took place in Shanghai from 5th- 8th June. The meeting in the context of the Action Plan 2018-2020 concerning EU-China Customs Cooperation aims at enhancing IPR enforcement activities of customs, and supporting practical cooperation on IPR enforcement between the authorities at local level in the EU and China.
Customs officers from 7 EU Member States (Belgium, France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal and Romania) together with 11 representatives from the General Administration of China Customs (GACC) and local Customs Offices participated in this group meeting. Representatives of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and EUROPOL-Intellectual Property Crime Coordinated Coalition (IPC3) also joined and presented their work with the objectives of promoting cooperation between customs and other law enforcement agencies and authorities.
The first two and a half days meetings consisted of a series of workshops where the participants discussed the current Strategic Framework, jointly analyses and compare results of seizure statistics, as well as addressed topics including but not limited to routing of counterfeits or the impact of the “belt and road” initiative. The meetings also included a session to facilitate activities of the network of Customs between the EU and China key ports (sea and airports), which aimed at targeting high risk consignment.
The meetings were followed by a study visit of one and a half days to Shanghai Port and Shanghai Free Trade Zone. During this “on the job exchange” both Delegations exchanged knowledge and experience of each other’s IPR enforcement policies and practices on a number of issues, for example, free zones in China, post and express courier and e-commerce in EU and China etc..
As a part of the project implementation, the IP Key China supported the preparation and organisation of this Working Group Meeting, coordinated by the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (TAXUD) and GACC.