Articles

Every year since 2003, the European Commission has published its annual report on Safety Gate, the European Rapid Alert System for dangerous non-food products. The reports cover the alerts identified … during the year and the measures taken by countries to eliminate or minimise the risks. It is worth noting that this system covers not only EU Member States, but also Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. In March, the annual report was published for 2023, with a record number of notifications, which emphasises the need to further mobilise efforts and improve tools to improve the safety of goods entering the European market. An important new tool – The General Product Safety Regulation - is discussed in this article.

Customs law is the rules of the game for everyone involved in customs and international trade. These rules are not always clear and unambiguous, do not always meet the expectations of those involved … and are sometimes even imprecise. This leads to difficulties in their application and forces the courts to intervene. This review contains some interesting insights and exceptional examples of legislation and court cases from Europe and around the world (Belgium, Lithuania, Bulgaria, WB, Brazil, USA, Ukraine, Israel), which have been presented at the 21th Authors’ Meeting.

The WTO's Harmonised System (HS) convention is probably one of the most successful international conventions and aims to harmonise tariff codes for goods worldwide. The WTO also has successful … conventions, including the 1996 Information Technology Agreement (ITA), which aims to improve trade in technology products by eliminating customs duties on selected and defined products. The interests of the HS and the ITA are not identical. While the HS aims to establish rules for a unified classification, regardless of whether the result leads to duty-free treatment or not, the ITA's objective is duty-free treatment for technological products.

The first month of 2024 started with the publication of several European documents at common European and regional level (Baltic Republics), which present interesting facts and analyses on the … export and transit of prohibited, restricted or dual-use goods. These are: White paper on Export Control; Commission Recommendation (EU) 2024/214 of 10 January 2024 on guidelines setting out the methodology for data gathering and processing for the preparation of the annual report on the control of exports, brokering, technical assistance, transit and transfer of dual-use items pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2021/821 of the European Parliament and of the Council; and 'Regional Approach to Ensure Uniform Customs Controls and Information Exchange for Implementation of the EU Restrictive Measures', adopted by the Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The UCC reform proposal, if adopted, means saying goodbye to many familiar concepts (entry summary declaration, customs declaration, declarant, etc.) and welcoming new ones. We provide an overview … of some proposed changes to the definitions of the UCC, which show that the current roles and responsibilities of the actors involved (e.g., exporter, importer, declarant, carrier, customs warehouse of free zone operator) as well as certain familiar customs simplifications will disappear (e.g., entry in the declarant’s records, simplified and supplementary declaration) and customs processes will change significantly, in particular due to the creation of a central EU Customs Data Hub. Economic operators concerned should analyse the forthcoming changes and draw the attention of the legislative bodies to weaknesses and possible unintended consequences in customs processes in a timely manner.

Case law tells us how importing and exporting SMEs, which do not have in-house customs expertise, understand their role and responsibilities, as well as those of a customs broker. Often, when … a dispute arises with customs over penalties imposed on an importer or exporter for an offence, the company claims that it was confident that it had properly fulfilled its obligations by entrusting customs clearance to a professional service provider - the customs broker. The company therefore learns the hard way about its customs-related responsibilities and obligations. What role does the customs broker play in preventing such situations? In this article, we argue that customs brokers need to take on the role of proactive educator and suggest a way to do this.

Customs brokers are an important part of the customs ecosystem. Both parties - traders and customs - can benefit greatly from working with these professional intermediaries. Customs brokers take … on the complex tasks related to customs clearance, protect and serve the interests of the parties involved while balancing their different needs (e.g. fast delivery vs. thorough control) and save them a lot of time so they can focus on their core activities. This topic is not new, and one might think that these areas of operation should already be established and standardised. However, discussions at the 19th Authors' Meeting showed that there are still more questions than answers in the countries of Europe and America.

The remaining electronic systems provided for in the Union Customs Code (UCC) will be implemented in 2024 and 2025. The introduction of a new customs system can have various implications for … a company, depending on its specific activity: time savings when paper documents become electronic (e.g. T2L), significant financial savings thanks to new simplification possibilities (e.g. centralised clearance), the need to adapt company processes and software to the transition to the new systems, or simply the potential for disruption during implementation (for example, the introduction of new services of the Intelligent Customs Declaration System (iMDAS) this month in Lithuania has led to a sad joke in business community that the only Christmas wish is a working iMDAS), etc. On 15 December, the European Commission adopted a new work programme to replace the previous one. Let's take a look at the updated implementation deadlines for the systems planned for the coming years. If you work with these systems, you should think about how they will or might affect your organisation and prepare accordingly.

The fundamental premise of these notes is that the absence of any harmonization for rules of non-preferential rules of origin is increasingly and very rapidly creating additional discriminatory … opportunities to expand and extend the scope and impact of a wide range of trade policies and trade restrictions. A brief analysis will provide a few examples of this phenomena, including an examination of its probable causes, and possible approaches to mitigate related barriers to international trade. The final notes will examine potential information and data contradictions in the current efforts to control so-called 'negative externalities' by way of 'deep origin' requirements, such as forced labour and carbon measures, at the border.

‘What are your main tasks as the Head of European Customs at DB Schenker? What are the main challenges and how do you deal with them? How do you measure success? What is ‘cool’ about customs … for you? If you would have all the powers and resources, what would be the very first thing you would change in customs world?’ – We had the opportunity to put these and other questions to Rainer Wilms, who we would like to thank for his answers and insights.

The development of free trade areas around the world, with most attention paid to the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas, is a major theme of the article. It also raises the question of the … role of the EU in this development. The article is based on the presentation at the European Customs Practitioners' Conference held in Vilnius, Lithuania on 25-26 May and online.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) - a topic that was barely heard of last year, it now seems to be a topic that appears at almost every conference and can be applied in every field. When we heard … about artificial intelligence and its availability on the market, it seemed so distant and unheard of, and when the first reports appeared in the press, we certainly did not think that we, as customs brokers, would be able to apply it to our own operations. I will not hide the fact that the first people to try out the CHAT GPT tool in our company were our colleagues who are the most interested in information technology and innovations in the market.

'It is December 2039, and various newsbots push the following content to their subscribers: ... Customs is being abolished next January (2040) when the EU's new customs system [Artificial Customs … Intelligence Depository, ACID] comes into operation ... The new system means that most of the approximately 5,500 Customs employees will lose their jobs.' This is how the introduction to the book "Customs Inside Anywhere, Insights Everywhere" by Frank Heijmann and John Peters begins [1].

What are the objectives of a post-clearance customs audit (PCA)? What does “a desk audit” mean? What are the obligations and rights of auditees? And generally, from a business perspective, isn’t … it more important to get border controls right for goods to smoothly cross the borders than to care about PCAs? If you don't know the answers, continue reading this article, which gives an overview of the principles of customs audit-based controls around the world. Understanding these will help you better understand how customs auditors think and work. This is important to be prepared for customs audits and also to develop an appropriate internal procedure for auditing your company's compliance with customs and trade regulations, which is an effective measure to prevent costly errors or to detect and correct them in a timely manner (before the customs audit).

Free zone development differs from one country to another. Different countries use different types and concepts of free zones. In some countries, Free Zones are developed to stimulate incoming … trade, as in the case of the US Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZs), while in others, such as developing countries, they exist to stimulate export-oriented trade. In this article, we overview the various types of free zones and the benefits they provide for business. Editors' note: Mark Rowbotham, the author of this article, is the author of the book "Freeports and Free Zones: Operations and Regulation in the Global Economy".

With the increase in globalization and economic interdependence between countries, trade facilitation has become a critically important issue for the global economy. Consequently, trade facilitation … has been addressed in all its possible meanings, in all fields and scopes, and by all institutions that are somehow linked to international trade, composing a true Tradeweb of players with specific roles and common objectives.