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The draft report of Deirdre Clune (PPE) on the Commission’s proposal ‘Establishing the Union Customs Code and the European Union Customs Authority, and repealing Regulation (EU) No 952/2013’ is expected to be published in the coming days.  According to the latest IMCO Committee agenda, MEPs will discuss the draft Report on 13 November. The consideration of amendments is provisionally scheduled to take place on 4 December, while compromised amendments will be discussed on 24-25 January.  The deadline to submit amendments is 16 November, with a view of adopting the IMCO Report on 22 February 2024.

CLECAT has shared its position paper with the members of the IMCO Committee. Whereas CLECAT agrees with the need to reform EU customs at a time when business suffers from diverging local practices and a lack of harmonised treatment between national customs authorities, we remain very concerned about the consequences of the reform on a large part of European business, namely European small and medium sized businesses. CLECAT notes that SME’s, when deprived from direct representation which is widely used by companies, will miss in the future the much-needed knowledge to handle their customs affairs, bringing supply chains at risk. Therefore, CLECAT calls for the possibility for direct representation with certain facilitation and for customs agents who will in the future hold the Trust & Check Trader status to be also recognised as such in case the importer is not a Trust & Check trader.  

CLECAT also has serious doubts whether customs legislation can be the basis for transferring obligations and responsibilities of non-fiscal legislation towards indirect customs representatives. As an alternative proposal to the Commission’s proposal, we believe that an importer should also have the option to call for various ‘representatives’ for the non-fiscal obligations. An importer must be able to not only engage a customs representative for customs obligations but also other expert parties for non-fiscal obligations.