Brussels, 10/10/2008 (Agence Europe) - In the final evaluation of the Customs 2007 programme, adopted on Tuesday 7 October, the Commission welcomes the scheme's “positive impact” on the work of customs administrations in Europe and says that it should be continued with increased emphasis being placed on trade facilitation and further work on risk analysis and management, joint training and building on the progress made information technology (IT) systems.
Customs 2007, the third Community action programme covered the period from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2007. It was open to the 27 EU member states, Croatia and Turkey and was aimed at providing support for and fostering cooperation and coordination between the customs administrations of the member states. To achieve its objectives, it relied primarily on: - joint action, including seminars, workshops and project groups, exchanges of officials, training activities, benchmarking and others; - information and technology systems, including the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) and a number of tariff-related systems (including the information system on the integrated tariff of the Community - TARIC) and risk management and information systems (including the electronic risk information form system - RIF). Nearly 80% of the programme budget (€166.55 million in total) was allocated to the IT systems.
The Commission, which finds that Customs 2007 “is greatly appreciated by its beneficiaries and stakeholders” and “effectively contributes (in some cases very significantly) to all its main objectives”, says in its report that the programme should be continued, with: - the objective-based management approach being maintained; - a review of the list of priorities and sub-priorities with a view to ensuring the continued validity of the objective-based approach; - enhancement of the visibility and usefulness of the Annual Work Programme (AWP) to set very clear key priorities for the year to come; - continued ample use made of project/working groups, which the beneficiaries have found to be most effective. The Commission also notes that other types of action (including seminars, benchmarking, etc) can also be very useful in specific circumstances, but their success depends to a great extent on the way in which they are organised. The Commission believes that the Customs 2007 guidelines for benchmarking, in particular, should be reviewed to address weaknesses identified by the evaluation.
The Commission says, too, that the evaluation identified a number of issues related to specific subject areas that should be addressed. It says that the Customs 2007 successor programme(s) should: 1) place increased emphasis on trade facilitation. This is a key objective for traders and for many participating countries' national customs administrations, but is one which has received relatively less attention under Customs 2007 than it should. To help reduce the burden on legitimate trade, it will be important to: - ensure timely delivery on the e-Customs initiative; - prioritise activities concerning single authorisations, including the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) and Single Authorisations for Simplified Procedures (SASP) and work towards truly uniform recognition and application of those concepts across the whole of the EU; - continue to involve economic operators in relevant joint activities; 2) undertake further work on risk analysis and management, a key area in combating fraud effectively. Work should focus on: - identifying politically sensitive elements of risk management (partly due to the fact that what is legal in one member state may be illegal in another); - continuing to emphasise activities and practical exercises directly aimed at further harmonisation of risk management approaches across the EU; 3) continue to pursue and implement the new common training approach with an open and inclusive dialogue between the Commission and participating countries to decide on the priorities for future years; 4) continue to build on progress made on IT systems, by further exploring and addressing areas for improvement and/or new actions, such as: - addressing the specific challenges and weaknesses identified by the evaluation that affect several of the IT systems currently deployed at EU level; - striving for pan-European harmonisation of interfaces with traders for all customs procedure. Lastly, the Commission believes that sufficient human resources should be devoted to coordination and that communication activities targeting relevant institutional audiences (in particular, national ministries) should be developed to raise the profile of the programme. (O.L./transl.rt)