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Action programme for customs (Customs 2020), 2014-2020

2011/0341A(COD)

This Commission staff working paper on the Customs 2020 programme concerns the progress report for 2018.

The report highlighted that 2018 was the fifth year of activities under the Customs 2020 programme and in many ways similar to 2017.

The numbers of European Information Systems (and their availability), actions, events, trainings and participants remained at high levels, testifying to a strong demand from business owners and national administrations for programme activities.

Budget and expert teams

There were no significant changes to the budget levels of previous years, with the exception of budget allocated to expert teams: in 2017 there were no committed expenses dedicated expert teams, while in 2018 there were two new expert teams launched.

Key observations

These can be deduced from the analysis of the performance measurement framework indicators in 2018. They are as follows:

- continued strong demand for programme support;

- high level of achievement of results of the joint actions is reported by the action managers;

- increase in the degree of networking among programme participants;

- very positive assessment of the achieved results of the joint actions, their usefulness and met expectations by national customs officials who participated in them. In particular, joint actions under objective 2 (European Information Systems) got a 100% score on usefulness, as assessed by participants to these actions;

- low awareness rate, as shown by the results of the programme polls and by the conclusions of the mid-term evaluation;

- the European Information Systems portfolio was expanded. Three IT projects were completed in 2018: the Mutual Recognition Agreement with Norway and two Single Window projects for new certificates;

- existing IT systems are regularly operated and are resistant to increased volume of data traffic;

- new EU training modules and increased number of national language versions, as well as a common multi-annual Action Plan for EU Customs Training & Development (2017-2020) in place.