Recently, the European Commission officially released a proposal proposing a comprehensive reform of its customs framework, which will introduce a data-driven system to simplify procedures for traders. This marks the launch of the most ambitious and comprehensive reform of the EU customs union since its establishment in 1968.

said the move is aimed at responding to the growing volume of e-commerce trade, the increasing number of EU rules and geopolitical changes. It is worth noting that the EU also plans to remove the current 150 euro import goods duty-free policy.

The EU said that in the current tariff system, consumers and carriers actually bear the main responsibility of tariffs, and after the reform, this part of the responsibility will be borne by the e-commerce platform. The platform will be responsible for ensuring that customs duties and VAT have been paid at the time of purchase, rather than making consumers pay additional fees or submit documents when they receive the package.

the most critical point is that the EU also plans to remove the current tax-free policy for imports below 150 euros. The EU said that about 65% of orders for packages currently entering the EU are deliberately undervalued and thus benefit from this policy. The EU expects the new e-commerce-tailored system to generate an additional € 1 billion a year in customs revenue.

at the same time, with the intelligent tax filing process, the tariff calculation of low-value goods can be reduced from thousands of possible tariff categories to four, making it easier to calculate tariffs on small packages. This also helps the e-commerce platform and customs to properly manage the 1 billion e-commerce transactions imported into the EU each year.

Proposed unified AI system

In addition, as the focus of the reform, the EU will set up a new customs administration, which will be responsible for supervising the EU customs data center, which will also be the core of the new system. Over time, the new data center will replace the existing customs IT infrastructure in member countries, with an estimated annual savings of 2 billion euros.

for enterprises, the advantage is that they only need to deal with this platform, and only need to submit information for multiple batches of goods. With full transparency in certain business processes and supply chains, the "trusted trader" is able to import goods into the EU without any active customs intervention.

According to the EU's proposed timetable, the EU Customs Data Center will be launched before 2028, when e-commerce goods imports will be accepted through this platform; after 2032, other traders can voluntarily start using this platform.

According to the legislative process, the proposal will be submitted to the European Parliament and the European Council for comments.

Source: China Cargo Association