At the ‘Economic and Financial Affairs’ Council on Tuesday 4 October in Luxembourg, the European finance ministers discussed customs authorities, their tasks and the impact of new legislation on the customs sector (see EUROPE 13033/17).
Between the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) (see EUROPE 13029/16) and international sanctions, the role of customs is set to change. “We have strong EU cooperation on the free movement of people and capital, but on the free movement of goods we still have 27 authorities acting independently from one another”, Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s Executive Vice-President, told a press conference.
He announced that the Commission will propose a reform of the customs union in December. “We want to strengthen its capacity with clear simple enforceable rules that also support the e-commerce”, he added.
EU customs collect more than €70 billion per year and protect the financial and economic interests of the EU. They ensure the safety and security of goods and facilitate trade.
According to an EU source interviewed by EUROPE after the EU Council, most ministers were in favour of more central coordination and a balance between fiscal and non-fiscal tasks. “We need risk analysis management as well as good data that could be stored centrally”, the source explained.
The source also confirmed that the EU Council had discussed the potential creation of a European customs agency, recommended by an expert group in March (see EUROPE 12923/13). The ministers cited the example of the Customs Eastern and South-Eastern Land Border Expert Team (CELBET), an initiative of 11 EU Member States - Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece - which aims to strengthen and improve operational cooperation. (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)