Dear Reader,

With this issue of the CCRM, we are saying farewell to 2024. While we still have one more month to go, we would like to take time to wish you a good and restful holiday break. We are all likely to need it as 2025 is promising to be quite a year in customs in trade.

In the EU, the legislative process for the EU Customs Reform is likely to move ahead under the Polish Presidency. The EU just signed a historic free trade agreement with Mercosur after having started negotiations in 1999! There is still a long way to go before the agreement enters into force. Legal scrubbing and of course ratification which might prove difficult. In the UK, early 2025 will bring new Government’s trade and industrial strategies. Then, the planned UK-EU summit will force the UK Government to think and plan the UK-EU trading relationship “reset”.

And then there is the US. We are all waiting to see what the President-Elect will do. From across-the-board tariffs to changing the basic, long-established WTO principles such as the Most Favoured Nation or valuation his promises have so far been quite ambitious. And we might still see some changes under the current administration such as changes to the de minimis.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this last issue of 2024. We continue to provide you with the latest customs and regulatory updates for the EU, the UK and Ukraine.

The issue includes several articles on classification – the latest WCO updates and the classification opinions within the EU Communication C/2024/5990. We also look at the issue of classification under the EU Deforestation Regulation and how it compares to the way commodity codes are included or excluded under trade agreements. We touch upon challenges to classification whether it’s around data or special practices such as in Israel where “legislative purpose” can change the way classification is interpreted.

The EU Customs Reform is still with the Council. In one of our articles, Michael Lux, a former Head of Unit at the European Commission, presents his proposal to the Council on how to amend the current version of the text.

Sanctions and export controls continue to be an important topic. The last author’s meeting was dedicated to how sanctions are implemented in different countries both within the EU and outside. We also have an article on the topic of sanctions specifically in the EU in light of the Reform. On the export controls side, the EU issued updated guidelines on cyber surveillance.

We also had a bit of a treat in this issue – an interview with Dmitry Grozoubinski the author of “Why Politicians Lie About Trade” in which he talks about his experience of learning about customs through Brexit and many other topics.

We rounded off this issue with an overview of a customs legal case on the retroactive effect of EU regulations and a country update on Israel.

We hope you enjoy this issue and we look forward to your feedback on the articles.

Anna Jerzewska
Chief Knowledge Officer at CustomsClear

Supervision costs to make a foodstuff "Kosher" are dutiable in Israel