Journal

Within companies, Customs operations management teams are typically slow to adopt new technology. Yet by adopting trade software solutions, they could centralize and automate their Customs and … trade compliance processes and harness the value of data, saving time and money and informing strategic decisions. Although this article mainly addresses companies, it is also of interest to Customs administrations who want to understand the solutions and tools that are available on the market and that enable companies to modernize their Customs and trade compliance processes.

The authors of this article argue that harmonization should be high on the agenda both of those who make, and of those who enforce, legislation. To illustrate, they explain some of the issues … faced by businesses due to the lack of harmonization of rules, or to the non-harmonized implementation of these rules. Three topics are addressed: the difficulty of identifying preferential rules of origin for a given HS code; the process to obtain a Customs registration number in the European Union; and the implementation of the AEO Programme in Ukraine.