At the meeting of the Council “Competitiveness” in Luxembourg on 25 June 2007 Member States were able to reach political agreement on the Modernised Customs Code. The Modernised Customs Code is a thoroughgoing revision of the entire body of Community customs law and thus represents the most comprehensive legislative project in the field of Customs since the current Customs Code was adopted in the year 1992.
The Modernised Customs Code was intensively discussed for almost 19 months, under three presidencies in the Council. Under Germany's presidency we succeeded in clarifying the issues of content which were still open and managed to find compromises on politically controversial topics. The next step is for the European Parliament – after adopting the joint position – to consider the draft on its second reading.
The goal of the Modernised Customs Code is in particular to simplify customs procedures and reduce them in number and thus to ease the administrative burdens for business and to introduce electronic communication between the Customs and traders as well as with other authorities.
The main innovations are above all the abolition of the monopoly of domestic customs agents which exists in some Member States, the creation of simpler and clearer rules for the incurrence and extinction as well as for the remission or refund of customs duties, the explicit confirmation of the systems of centralised clearance and self-assessment as well as a high degree of standardisation of the special customs procedures.
