EU TRADE STAKEHOLDERS CALL FOR REALISTIC TIMELINES FOR NEW ENTRY AND IMPORT SYSTEMS
On 16 March, CLECAT, together with other members of the Trade Contact Group - the express industry, cargo owners, stakeholders in the air and maritime transport sector, IT service providers, as well as the American businesses active in Europe - issued a joint letter to Gerassimos Thomas, Director General of EU Commission’s DG TAXUD, concerning the implementation of the UCC Work Programme. The signatories to the joint trade letter expressed serious concerns regarding the delayed implementation/update of Member States’ entry and import systems and called on the Commission to carry out an immediate review of the timelines to ensure that trade has realistic and sufficient time for implementation.
TCG members voice serious concerns that, with less than 10 months before the end-of-year implementation deadline for Member States’ entry and import systems, traders have not been provided with technical specifications in approximately 60% of EU countries for the development of National Import Systems (NIS), Arrival Notifications (AN), Presentation Notification (PN) and Temporary Storage Declarations (TSD). The trade representatives stress that the late availability of the final version of the specifications is placing a significant burden on traders who, unless action is taken by the Commission, are left with limited time to properly develop, test and implement these systems through no fault of their own. They note that economic operators need a sufficient period of time to carry out the various systems implementations in an adequate manner to ensure full compliance and business continuity.
The trade stakeholders therefore recommend, for those Member States where the technical specifications are not available today, extending the deployment window for trade by 18 months from the day they become available in full. Additionally, regarding specifically the maritime sector, the TCG members recommend aligning the implementation of the Arrival Notifications, Presentation Notification and Temporary Storage project with ICS2 Release 3 due to the highly interdependent nature of the new data requirements. Lastly, TCG members also call for greater monitoring and transparency on the national planning and more active and effective information sharing with the trade community.
The joint letter was further brought to the attention of the Commission and Member States’ customs administrations at this week’s meeting of the Electronic Customs Coordination Group (ECCG), where the Commission assured trade stakeholders that discussions and coordination with Member States were ongoing. The Commission agreed on the need for realistic implementation and said that soon, hopefully, there will be a clear picture for possible future actions.
The full joint trade letter is available here.