Newsletters

On 4 February, CLECAT attended the second meeting of the EU Domestic Advisory Group (DAG) under the EU-UK Trade and Facilitation Agreement (TCA), which advises the EU Commission on the TCA implementation. EU DAG members reflected on experiences with EU-UK trade one year after the post Brexit deal entered into force and outlined remaining challenges and priorities.

On 2 February, ENVI rapporteur Mohammed Chahim presented his draft report on the European Commission’s proposal for EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), stressing the importance of the mechanism for achieving EU’s ambitious climate objectives. While welcoming the overall design of the mechanism, as proposed by the Commission, as a solid starting point for the legislative process, Mr Chahim proposes substantial and important changes to the initial text, aiming to further strengthen CBAM’s climate ambition, its long-term effectiveness and governance.

On 26 January, the global customs community celebrated the International Customs day. WCO Secretary General, Dr. Kunio Mikuriya, revealed the theme of the year “Scaling up Customs Digital Transformation by Embracing a Data Culture and Building a Data Ecosystem”.

The European Commission has opened a public consultation on views and experiences regarding the new EU e-commerce rules, as part of its currently ongoing work on revisiting the customs and taxation collection systems for e-commerce (fiscal aspects) and on identifying innovative customs control approaches for e-commerce imports (non-fiscal aspects).

Earlier this week, the European Commission published the third report on the progress achieved in the development of the electronic systems under the UCC since its entry into force on 1 May 2016.

As part of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, CLECAT was invited to participate in the Conference "Brexit: one year of customs formalities, assessment and perspectives", organized by the Directorate General of Customs and Excises on 27 January.

DG MOVE released this week a Q&A document on posting of drivers in the context of transport of goods by road. The guide aims at a common understanding and a harmonised approach of the posting rules, as the new rules will enter into force on 2nd February.

On 25 January, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released data for global air freight markets showing that full-year demand for air cargo increased by 6.9% in 2021, compared to 2019 (pre-COVID levels) and 18.7% compared to 2020 following a strong performance in December 2021. This was the second biggest improvement in year-on-year demand since IATA started to monitor cargo performance in 1990 (behind 2010’s 20.6% gain), outpacing the 9.8% rise in global goods trade by 8.9 percentage points.

Maritime analyst Sea Intelligence published on yesterday the latest issue of the Global Liner Performance report, with schedule reliability figures up to December 2021. The report shows that schedule reliability dropped again, this time by -1.2 percentage points on month-to-month basis to 32.0%; the lowest ever global schedule reliability since Sea-Intelligence started the measurement in 2011.