EU Advance Cargo Declaration

Overview

The European Union Advance Cargo Declaration Regime becomes effective on January 1st 2011.

This new manifest regulation aims to ensure an equal level of protection against terrorist attacks for all goods shipped into, out of or through the EU through customs controls.    It is similar to the advanced manifest regime (“24 hour rule”) instituted by the United States’ Trade Act of 2002 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.   It will affect all freight imported into and exported out of Europe, as well as transhipment cargo.

As from 1 January 2011, any failure to comply with the obligations laid down in the European Union Advance Cargo Declaration Regime will result in individual EU Member States imposing penalties according to the national legislation and it will apply in addition to existing customs rules laid down in the Community Custom Code.

The amendment to the Customs Code covers four major changes:

• It requires traders to provide customs authorities with information on goods prior to import into, export from or transhipment via the EU
• It provides reliable traders (Authorised Economic Operators) with trade facilitation measures
• It introduces uniform community risk-selection criteria for controls, supported by computerised systems for goods entering, leaving or transiting EU customs territory
• It introduces an EU database enabling the consultation of all national registration numbers (EORI)

As the EU has not established one EU-wide system, the declaration will be different in each individual member state and no specific guidelines have been provided in order to comply with the EU Advance Cargo Declaration. 

In practice, the responsibility to declare the required cargo information in most cases rests with the entity which has assumed the responsibility of the carriage or has issued the bill of lading “for the carriage of the goods into the territory of the Community on the vessel” (as carrier/ship operator) or his representative, with exceptions for combined transport and vessel sharing. Third parties (such as freight forwarders) are entitled to file the information instead of the carrier but the carrier will ultimately still remain liable.

Contact for enquiries:  Any enquiries regarding the European Union Advance Cargo Declaration Regime should be directed to Domenico Ferrara in the Club’s London office (email: domenico.ferrara@thomasmiller.com).

The Club has prepared one of its Legal Briefing publications on this subject (see Resources link below) which carries more detail on the operators who need to declare, the information required and various other compliance issues which can vary between individual EU states.

The Legal Briefing can also be found in the Publications section of this website.

The EU regime is laid down in Regulation 648/2005, which was implemented by Regulation 1875/2006 and then amended by Regulation 312/2009. These regulations are all part of the Community Custom Code and therefore referred as Security Amendment to the Community Customs Code.

The European Customs Information Portal provides a set of resources in various languages including both guidance notes and example documentation.  Click the link below to access the portal:

http://ec.europa.eu/ecip/security_amendment/index_en.htm