Customs controls are still not sufficiently harmonised across Member States to provide adequate protection of the EU’s financial interests, according to a new special report published on Tuesday 30 March by the European Court of Auditors.
In order to standardise the way Member States select imports for control, in 2018 the Commission adopted a Customs Financial Risk Framework, consisting of common criteria and standards as well as guidance.
It is this new framework that the auditors evaluated. The auditors visited the customs authorities of five Member States between October 2019 and January 2020 and assessed how their risk management systems used common financial risk criteria and standards to select customs controls, Jan Gregor, the Member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the report, told the press.
A questionnaire was also sent to the customs authorities of all EU Member States to gather information on their perception of the current level of harmonisation of customs controls. 63% of customs administrations replied that they considered themselves already in compliance with the new rules, he said.
Overall, European auditors believe that the new standards do not define the concept of risk well, are too flexible and therefore give Member States too much leeway to reduce the number of controls.
In their view, several important elements are missing, such as an analysis of EU-wide imports and methods to deal with the financial risks of e-commerce imports.
The Court of Auditors concludes that in practice the standards have not significantly changed the way Member States select imports for control, as they have essentially limited themselves to matching their old criteria for targeting suspect imports with those of the new framework.
In addition, the report reveals that Member States apply the rules in very different ways. A situation like this could provide operators with the opportunity of targeting points of entry into the EU where there are fewer controls.
The auditors also found that Member States interpret risk warnings differently and that the procedures they apply to reduce the number of checks to a manageable level also differ.
In view of these findings, the auditors recommend that the Commission should strengthen the uniform application of customs controls and establish a real coordination and analysis capacity at EU level.
Among the possible scenarios, the report proposes giving increased responsibilities to existing customs working groups, creating a specific service within a dedicated Directorate General within the Commission or creating a specialised EU agency.
See the report: https://bit.ly/3fovf67 (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)