The European Union: 12% or 0%, and the origin rules are borrowed

What this page is, and what it is not

This is the regulatory position for cut flowers of Kenyan origin entering the European Union, read from the Commission's own tariff result and from the instruments themselves. It is not advice, it is not a quotation, and it does not cover any member state's national procedure beyond saying where one exists.

It is also not a Netherlands page. Most Kenyan flowers enter the Union through the Netherlands, but the duty, the origin rules and the pest regime set out below are Union-wide. What is national — VAT, and the practical detail of clearance — is flagged as national rather than generalised from one country to twenty-seven.

The duty is a preference, and preferences are claimed

Two numbers govern, and the gap between them is the whole point.

Read from the European Commission's Access2Markets tariff result for CN 0603 11 00 from Kenya to the Netherlands, which carried the date 25 September 2026 when we read it.

The Commission does not present the 0% as a rate you simply receive. It attaches a condition in terms, directing the reader to the Rules of Origin Self-Assessment tool to check whether the product is originating and can benefit.

So the difference between 12.00% and 0% is a document and a rule — not a fact about where the flowers grew. How that proof actually works, in both the EU and the UK, is set out here.

The unusual part: the agreement has no origin protocol

This is the finding on this page that we have not seen published anywhere for buyers.

The EU–Kenya Economic Partnership Agreement entered into force on 1 July 2024, and the Commission describes what it does in words that name the product: the EU "fully liberalizes access to its market from day 1… allowing all goods from Kenya (mostly agricultural, such as vegetables, cut flowers, fruits, tea and coffee), except arms, to enter the EU market without tariffs and quotas."

But the agreement does not carry its own rules of origin. The Commission states:

"It is envisaged to negotiate a new Protocol on Rules of Origin as soon as possible, and at the latest within the first five years of implementation of the EPA. In the meantime, the rules of origin of the EU Market Access Regulation (EU) 2016/1076 will temporarily apply to the trade of both parties."

The preference is therefore claimed under borrowed rules, on a stated horizon. Five years from 1 July 2024 is 1 July 2029 at the latest.

What that does and does not mean. It does not make the preference precarious — the rules are in force and the proofs are defined. It does mean the instrument you are complying with is scheduled to be replaced. If you are writing origin obligations into an agreement that runs past that horizon, name the rules rather than assuming continuity.

The proofs themselves, under Article 14 of Regulation (EU) 2016/1076: a EUR.1 certificate, or a declaration of origin on an invoice, delivery note or other commercial document describing the product in enough detail to identify it. The declaration may be made out by an approved exporter under Article 20, or by any exporter for consignments not exceeding EUR 6 000 — a ceiling a commercial flower consignment will ordinarily exceed.

Roses meet a pest requirement that carnations and gypsophila do not

Since 26 April 2025, cut flowers of Rosa from countries of the African continent — and from Cape Verde, Saint Helena, Madagascar, La Réunion, Mauritius and Israel — require an official statement on the phytosanitary certificate for Thaumatotibia leucotreta, false codling moth, under one of four alternative routes.

Two features of the EU version are worth stating here because they differ from the British one:

• A stand-alone post-harvest treatment must have been assessed by the European Food Safety Authority. The Great Britain text imposes no equivalent.
• Under two of the four routes the pre-export inspection has a stated intensity — enough to detect a 2% level of infestation at 95% confidence, under ISPM 31, carried out during the growing season and again before export.

The rest of the Kenyan range is not in scope of this requirement at all. The four routes, and what each one leaves on the certificate, are set out here.

How often consignments are opened, and how Kenya sits against its competitors

The full Annex I table for cut flowers, every competitor origin, and the rule for an unlisted genus →

The European Union publishes this, by plant and by country of origin, in Annex I of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/2389 — as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1101, in force from 15 June 2026. The figures are minimum rates of identity and physical checks.

Three things a buyer should take from that table.

Kenyan roses meet the same rate in the EU as in Great Britain — 25%. Two separate regimes, two separate instruments, and the same number. That is not a coincidence a buyer needs to explain, but it does mean routing a rose consignment through one rather than the other does not buy a lighter inspection.

Kenyan gypsophila is the lightest Kenyan line in the table, at 3% — and it is lighter than the Great Britain equivalent of 5%. The summer-flower range meets materially less friction than roses do in both regimes, which is consistent with what the pest regime targets. Only roses carry the false codling moth requirement.

And the origin comparison is stark. Ecuadorian roses are checked at 1% and Colombian at 5%, against Kenya's 25%. A Kenyan rose consignment is opened at twenty-five times the Ecuadorian rate. That is a real competitive fact and we are not going to bury it — how Kenya compares with the origins it is measured against is set out here.

Read the rate for what it is. It is a minimum frequency of checks, not a probability of a problem — and a higher rate reflects the pest pathway a regulator has assessed, not the quality of any grower's flowers. What it does affect is time, on a product whose working life is measured in days.

The two regimes were revised together, and they are nearly identical

Great Britain's frequency table and the EU's Annex I both carry a June 2026 revision — the GB table last updated 15 June 2026, the EU consolidation in force from the same date. Set side by side, the rates for roses are the same at every origin:

Two differences, and both are small and specific. Ecuadorian roses are checked at 3% in GB against 1% in the EU. And Kenyan gypsophila is 5% in GB against 3% in the EU — the one Kenyan line where the EU is the lighter regime.

Kenyan Dianthus is 5% in both.

What a buyer should take from the alignment. On roses, the choice of entry point does not change how often the consignment is opened. That was not obviously true before these figures were read side by side, and it removes one argument for routing decisions that are often made on assumption.

What the controls cost, and the one number that surprises people

The Annex IV minimums, and how the Netherlands charges by the minute instead →

Fees are mandatory. Article 79 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625 requires competent authorities to collect them for official controls on goods entering the Union — either at the amounts set out in Annex IV, or at their own cost calculated under Article 82(1). So the figures below are the floor the Regulation itself names, not necessarily what a given member state bills.

Cut flowers have their own line in the schedule, separate from cuttings, seedlings, foliage, fruit and cut Christmas trees:

The cap is the part worth doing the arithmetic on. Reaching EUR 140 from EUR 17.50 at fourteen cents per additional thousand stems takes roughly nine hundred thousand stems in one consignment. No airfreight flower consignment gets near it, so in practice the plant health check on cut flowers costs EUR 17.50, whatever the size of a commercial shipment.

Set against Great Britain, the structures differ more than the totals. GB charges £7.64 per consignment for the documentary, identity and physical components combined, and charges it whether or not the consignment is opened. The EU schedule prices each check separately, so a consignment that is documented, identity-checked and physically inspected reaches roughly EUR 31.50 to 38.50 at the Annex IV amounts.

Two cautions. These are the Regulation's amounts, and a member state charging on a cost basis under Article 82(1) may bill more. And we have not verified what any particular member state actually charges — that is a national figure, and this page does not invent one. How border charges behave as an order grows is set out here.

What is national — and what the two gateways actually charge

Germany — 7% VAT, Land plant protection services, the listed airports → France — 10% VAT, the SIVEP, Roissy →

VAT is a member state matter. Rates on cut flowers differ across the Union, and the rate that applies to you depends on where the consignment is entered and sold, not on the fact that it entered the EU. There is no EU VAT rate on flowers, and this page does not invent one. What it can do is state the two rates a Kenyan consignment most often meets, from the two national sources that set them.

The Netherlands — 9%, with a proposal on the table to end it. The Dutch tax authority lists sierteeltproducten — ornamental horticulture products, which it describes as bulbs, flowers, plants and nursery stock — under the reduced 9% rate. But on Prinsjesdag 2026 the government proposed abolishing that reduced rate for ornamental horticulture from 1 January 2028, after which the general 21% would apply — expressly including imported ornamental products, and expressly excluding products supplied onward to other countries. The government's own business portal states the status plainly: there is a plan; both chambers of parliament still have to decide. It is a proposal, not law, and it can change. A buyer clearing and selling in the Netherlands should plan around 9% now and watch 2028.

Germany — 7%. The Turnover Tax Act sets the standard rate at 19% and reduces it to 7% for the supply, import and intra-Community acquisition of the goods listed in its Annex 2, whose item 8 is flowers and buds, cut, for bouquets or ornamental purposes, fresh — ex heading 0603. The word that matters is fresh. The reduced rate is written for fresh cut flowers, which is what flies from Nairobi.

For the Netherlands — the entry point for two-fifths of Kenya's declared exports — the national execution has its own page: which authority sets the rules, which agency inspects, how the entry is filed, and what the inspection agency charges. The Netherlands →

Both figures apply only where the consignment is entered and sold. A consignment cleared in the Netherlands and sold on to Germany meets the German rate on that sale; the Dutch proposal itself excludes onward supplies abroad. Elsewhere in the Union, the rate of the member state of entry applies, and it is not stated here.

The same caution applies to clearance practice. The inspection frequency is established and is set out above — it is Union law rather than a national rate. What remains national is what a member state charges for official controls, and we have verified no schedule for that.

The CHED-PP and prior notification - who files, in which system, the one-working-day rule and the four-hour derogation, and the three orders for a failed consignment →

One thing the route decides for you

If you are buying in the Netherlands and moving the flowers to Great Britain, the regime changes. Great Britain publishes that goods brought from a non-EU country through the EU may be treated as an EU import rather than a Kenyan one, where they entered free circulation, passed EU plant health checks and hold a member state certificate where applicable. That is set out on the UK page, and it is a plant health rule — it settles nothing about whether a tariff preference survives a sale in free circulation, which is a different question in a different body of law.

After clearance: no plant passport for cut flowers moving inside the Union

The two lists that decide it, read in full — and the British position →

Once a consignment has passed its checks at the border control post it is in free circulation, and the question becomes whether any plant health document has to travel with it from there — from a Dutch importer to a German wholesaler, or from the auction to a buyer in another Member State. For cut flowers the answer is no, and it is worth seeing why, because the reasoning is not "flowers are outside the law".

Cut flowers are "plants" under the plant health law. Regulation (EU) 2016/2031 defines plants as living plants and a list of living parts of plants, and point (f) of that list is cut flowers. They are inside the scope of the plant passport system in principle.

Which plants actually need a passport is a list, and the list is Annex XIII. Article 79(1) requires the Commission to list the plants, plant products and other objects for which a plant passport is required for movement within the Union, and requires that list to include all plants for planting, other than seeds. The list itself is Annex XIII to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2072. We read the consolidated annex of 6 July 2026 in full. Its twelve points cover plants for planting; plants, other than fruit and seed, of the citrus family and of Vitis; citrus fruits with leaves; wood of named genera; and seed of named agricultural and vegetable species. No point covers cut flowers of Rosa, Dianthus, Gypsophila or any other genus Kenya exports. Annex XIV — the list for protected zones — was read the same way: conifers, the fireblight host genera, and plants for planting of listed genera. Nothing on it catches a Kenyan cut flower.

What that means in practice. A Kenyan rose that has passed its checks moves onward within the Union as any other cleared good. No plant passport is issued for it and none is asked for. The plant health obligations sit at the border, and for cut flowers they end there.

Two limits on that statement. It is the plant health position only: whether the tariff preference survives a sale in free circulation is a customs question, and this site leaves it open. And the annexes are amended often — the consolidated text of 2019/2072 already carries four 2026 dates, with a fifth version dated October — so the reading is dated, and the annex, not this page, is the authority. Every term used here is defined in the glossary →

What to ask

• Which proof of origin will accompany this consignment — a EUR.1, or a declaration? And if a declaration, on what basis?
• Has the origin position been self-assessed against the rules that currently apply, rather than assumed from the agreement?
• For roses: which of the four false codling moth routes applies, and will the certificate carry the codes?
• In which member state will the consignment be entered, and therefore whose VAT and whose clearance practice applies?
• Is any part of this priced on the assumption of 0%? The preference is conditional, and the fallback is 12.00%.