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Someone recently asked me what are the current top challenges for customs in Europe. The article is an attempt to summarise the answer to this question. These are the five issues that, in my … opinion, are likely to impact the customs industry in the upcoming months and years. Some are more across-the-board and some are a bit more niche and local. The article comes from the author’s personal experience of working in the industry and across the private and public sectors and is therefore a personal perspective. By no means an exhaustive list.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has recently, after several pilots (amongst others in the Netherlands), launched an online tool for the verification of preferential origin statements. … The tool is named Genesis, after the ancient Greek word for origin, which is also the name of the first book of the Holy Bible and one of the world’s most popular progressive rock bands. So the obvious questions are: how progressive is this tool and does it rock?

On May 30, 2024, the Advocate General (AG) of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued a very interesting opinion in the case Harley-Davidson v. Commission (C-297/23 P). This … case, currently awaiting a final decision by the CJEU, holds substantial implications for importers needing to determine the non-preferential origin of goods within the EU.

In 2023, Côte d’Ivoire introduced a new and modern system of advance customs rulings. This development followed two workshops organised in Côte d’Ivoire in May 2023 with the German Alliance for … Trade Facilitation and under the aegis of the EU-WCO Programme for the Harmonized System in Africa funded by the EU. The workshops were part of a wider capacity-building programme to support Côte d’Ivoire in meeting its WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement obligations - in particular, Article 3 of the TFA which requires signatory parties to provide an option to apply advance rulings on origin and classification.

Non-manipulation certificate is a document required when goods of preferential origin are unloaded, stored and/or subjected to treatments necessary to maintain the goods in a third country while … being shipped from the country of dispatch to the country of destination.

The rules of non-preferential origin are specific provisions, developed from principles established by national legislation or international agreements ('origin criteria'), applied by a country … to determine the origin of goods.

Rules of preferential origin are an essential element of preferential trade agreements. They define the conditions under which a product is regarded as originating and can benefit from lower … rates of duty upon importation in the country of destination.

Product-specific rules of preferential origin determine requirements of working or processing which must be done on non-originating materials in order for the product manufactured to obtain originating … status.