Brussels, 21/08/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 21 August, the European Commission adopted a new strategy and action plan for better customs risk management.
The new strategy seeks to ensure that customs is more coherent, efficient and cost effective in identifying and supervising supply chain risks, explained the Commission in a press statement. The action plan sets out specific measures to achieve this, together with the actors responsible and clear deadlines for doing so by 2020. These actors may include the Commission itself, member states and economic operators.
In a press release, Algirdas Šemeta, Commissioner responsible for Customs, said, “Customs holds the key to smooth trade and safe trade. With 300 million declarations to process and €3.5 trillion worth of trade in goods to supervise every year, EU customs need to optimise their use of resources, without compromising security or disrupting legal trade”. He added that “robust risk management allows customs to identify where, when and how their controls are best deployed, and to respond effectively when threats do arise”.
The new strategy identifies the key priorities where action is needed in order to achieve more effective and efficient customs risk management. These priorities are as follows: - efficient controls and risk-mitigation (for example, detecting the risk of a bomb or infectious disease before the shipment is even loaded for transportation in a third country); - data quality (e.g. adjustments need to be made to certain legal, procedural and IT systems so that no additional costs have to be borne by industry or the local authorities); - information sharing; - interagency cooperation: customs should also work closely with other law enforcement authorities and define common risk criteria; - the partnership between customs and reliable traders should be further developed, including through the promotion of the EU Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme; - capacity building (e.g. EU level support could be given to help address weaknesses, including possible further capacities at EU and member state level); - international customs cooperation (e.g. the EU should remain active in helping to set global standards in international fora, and should work to implement and promote these common norms amongst international trading partners). (MB)