If you were trading with Turkey before the 1st January 2021 when the UK officially left the European Union, you might be familiar with ATR forms. ATR forms allowed businesses from the EU and Turkey to trade together and benefit from the Trade Agreement in place at the time. The document was similar to an EUR1 form but exclusive to Turkey.
Turkey being an important trading partner of the UK – the government negotiated our own continuity agreement with Turkey following the decision to leave the European Customs Union. However, the new trade agreement which came into force in 2021 no longer mentioned ATR forms.
To allow your customer in Turkey to claim preferential rates of duty when sending goods of UK preferential origin, UK businesses must provide an origin declaration on their commercial invoices. The wording to be used must be the one provided in the UK trade agreement with Turkey which can be found here. Before using this statement, exporters must ensure that their goods comply with the rules of origin listed in the trade agreement for their commodity code. These can be found on the origin reference document of the Trade Agreement as per above link.
This means that ATR forms can no longer be issued by UK Chambers of Commerce or used for shipments from the UK. Many of our members still receive request from their customers in Turkey asking for these forms. In those instances, we recommend referring the customers to the trade agreement and the new rules in place.
Please note there are no restrictions on UK Certificates of Origin being provided for Turkey and you can continue applying for those as usual. These being non-preferential documents, they are not linked to the trade agreement with Turkey but may be useful when trading with this market. Please contact our Export Documentation team on exportdocs@gmchamber.co.uk if you have any questions about the above and how to get a Certificate of Origin.