On Thursday 24 June, the European Union presented its modernisation initiative to enable the World Customs Organization (WCO), a Brussels-based forum of 180 member countries and jurisdictions, to deal more effectively with today’s challenges in international trade.
This initiative, presented at the WCO Council, calls for reform of the WCO with the following objectives: – to make the Organization a more effective and efficient actor for the promotion of safe, secure and licit trade; – to support customs policies world-wide that address global issues; – to contribute to sustainable development; and – to remain fit for purpose in the digital world.
The EU suggests a three-step approach to undertake this reform. First, it would define the strategic priorities of the WCO in the longer term, going well beyond the three-year cycle of the current strategic plan.
While they consider that the Organization’s ‘core business’ activities (classification of goods, rules of origin, the fight against fraud, trade facilitation, standardisation) should remain at the top of the agenda, Europeans identify other urgent strategic priorities, such as digital customs, environmental protection, and the creation of a single window for coordinated border management.
Setting long-term priorities could imply some organisational changes to improve transparency and decision-making capacity, and it would also have consequences for financial resource needs.
See the proposal: https://bit.ly/3h5llWg (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)