Having regard to Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Harmonized System (HS) Convention, the matters for which no requests has been made under the provisions of paragraphs 2 to 6 of Article 8 of the HS Convention, shall be deemed to be approved by the Council. If a Contracting Party to the HS Convention has notified the Secretary General that it requests that a certain matter be (i) re-examined by the HS Committee or (ii) referred to the Council, a so called “reservation” is entered by a Contracting Party to the HS Convention. In such instance, the matter of concern to the Contracting Party shall be re-examined by the HS Committee.
This overview provides a legal framework of the actual reservation process including the relevant parts of the HS Convention (Article 8), the Rules of Procedures of the HS Committee (Article 20) and Decision of the Council No. 298.
It also provides the "Request Form for Re-examination (Reservations)" that can be used by the Contracting Parties when entering request for re-examination (reservations) in the context of the application of Article 8.2 of the HS Convention. Although it is not mandatory, the use of this form (adopted by the HS Committee at its 70th Session) would provide the Contracting Parties to the HS Convention with an additional source of information for familiarizing themselves with the procedure and rules to be applied in this regard.