EU centralised clearance - benefits and limits

Godfried Smit, Secretary General of the European Shippers' Council, explains how centralised clearance works under the Union Customs Code and why customs and trade compliance professionals should understand both its practical benefits and its current limits.

Topics covered:

• The legal basis of centralised clearance (Article 179 of the UCC, and the UCC Delegated and Implementing Acts)
• How the supervising customs office and the customs office of presentation divide responsibilities when goods are declared in one Member State and presented in another
• The AEO status generally required to use centralised clearance across two Member States
• A worked example of centralised clearance between Austria, Croatia and Romania
• The customs procedures and declaration types in scope, including standard declarations, simplified declarations and entry in the declarant's records (EIDR)
• The state of IT implementation across Member States and the European Commission's central systems
• Why VAT and excise duty remain outside the centralised clearance system, and whether this is expected to change under the EU customs reform's Data Hub
• The practical benefits (single point of contact, potential cost reduction) and challenges (complex multi-Member-State authorisation, cultural change) of adopting centralised clearance

For a broader overview of the topic, please watch the full recording. The slides are available in the Resources section.

Please note that this summary was generated using AI, based on the recording and available slides.