On Friday 8 June, the European Commission unveiled its two proposed regulations establishing action programmes on customs and taxation, to take over from the ‘Customs’ and ‘Fiscalis’ programmes, which are due to expire on 31 December 2020, over the period 2021-2027.
With budgets in current prices of €950 million for ‘Customs’ and €270 million for ‘Fiscalis’, or 0.07% and 0.02% respectively of the total envelope of the forthcoming EU budget, these programmes will add real European added value at a minimal cost, the European Commissioner for Taxation, Pierre Moscovici, said in a press release.
“They are not the best-known programmes and they do not have the highest budgets”, his head of cabinet, Olivier Bailly, told a press conference. However, they concern the very important matter of the new challenges facing the administrations, he stressed.
Customs. Following the revision of the European Customs Code, which provides for all information between national customs services to be dealt with electronically, the next programme needed to make life easier for the administrations in this area should lay emphasis on the interconnection of systems and training, Bailly explained.
To achieve this, the proposal will almost double the budget of this programme, which has been in place for 25 years, from €523 million over the period 2014-2020 to €950 million. This new budget also aims to help the customs administration to deal with the increase in commercial flows and emerging tendencies and technologies, such as online trade and blockchain technology.
Although this programme aims to support cooperation between customs authorities, it will not support the member states’ customs equipment. This will be covered by a different programme in the framework of border management, to be presented by the Commission next week.
Fiscalis. An increase has been proposed for the ‘Fiscalis’ programme as well, compared to the envelope of €223.2 million for the previous period, albeit a smaller one.
The aim, once again, is to take account of new challenges and improve the computerisation of resources to tackle tax fraud and tax evasion by developing and maintaining IT solutions that are interoperable between tax authorities.
The new programme also brings in a simpler mechanism to finance the adaptations or extensions required in European electronic cooperation systems with third countries that are not part of the programme and with international organisations, as long as the action is in the interests of the EU.
It is worth noting that these programmes have been designed for an EU of 27. The texts refer to the forthcoming withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU, which will mean taking the country out of all existing electronic customs systems financed by the programme ‘Customs 2020’. However, as the cost of this cannot be estimated accurately at this stage, the Commission has decided not to include them in these proposals.
Like their predecessors, the two new programmes will be open to the employees of the customs and tax administrations of the member states of the EU and to the candidate and possible candidate countries that have decided to join the programme. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)