Transit reforms

Fraud-busting reforms have been agreed to the regulations that govern the European transit system, under which hauliers are able to transport goods across national borders without the need to pay duties or deal with import procedures, except in the destination country. The system has been exploited by unscrupulous operators, who have received goods at European ports and, once they have been given a transit authorisation, have “lost” the goods – selling them on the black market - en route to their official destination. This has cost European exchequers millions of Euros in customs duties and has often meant that freight forwarders – who have been held legally responsible for transit consignments – have had to pay the missing duties. As a result, the European Commission has promoted the computerisation of the transit system and now a joint EU-EFTA committee has agreed on regulatory reform. The changes aim to strengthen the basic transit procedure; define precise reliability criteria for granting fast track transit, especially the waiving of guarantees to pay missing duty, to trusted users; controls for the erid of a transit operation; and arrangements for recovering the customs debt. The bulk of the new rules will apply from 1 July , in the EU and Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The fast track procedure reforms will come into force in December.