Community customs code: treatments, controls and risk-related informations (amend. Regulation (EC) No 2913/92)

The European Commission has presented a report on the implementation of the Customs 2002 programme (1998-2002). Customs 2002 covers two types of project: "joint" actions and computer applications. I) The first part of the report concerns joint actions, i.e. those aspects of cooperation that are not directly related to information technology: exchanges of officials, project groups, seminars, benchmarking and training. It looks at the joint actions carried out over the last three years of Customs 2002 (2000, 2001, 2002) for a total cost of EUR 6.75 million, since those carried out earlier are covered in the 2001 interim report. The different aspects of the programme interested the national administrations, who were, by and large, satisfied with the course and results of the operations. In the participants' opinion, the improvements to be made relate above all to an even more finely tuned selection of subjects and participants. The dissemination of the results could be improved. 2) The second part presents the results and impact of the different computer applications and the organisational and management tools of the IT projects. A total of EUR 84 million was committed to the IT side of Customs 2002. Since the computerised systems have Community and national components, Customs 2002 only finances the Community component. The development and deployment of the CCN/CSI (Common Communication Network/Common System Interface) communication network required an investment of EUR 23 million, of which half was financed by Customs 2002 and the other half by Fiscalis. The NCTS (New Computerised Transit System) application represents 51% of the Customs 2002 IT budget (including half of the CCN/CSI expenditure and the management tools). The NCTS gave rise to considerable costs, since both development and deployment were involved. Most of the other customs applications were already in operation before the beginning of the programme. The "tariff" applications account for 15% of the total budget (those requiring most work were TARIC (Integrated Community Tariff), TQS (Tariff Quota and Surveillance), EBTI (European Binding Tariff Information), ISPP (Information System for Processing Procedures) and SMS (Specimen Management System). AFIS/SID and SIGL account for 13% and 5% respectively of the total budget. The report states that Customs 2002 has helped enhance cooperation both among Member States and between Member States and the Commission. In addition, it has prepared the way for the integration of future Member States' administrations into the management of Community customs. Because of the direct involvement of national and EU administrations in this type of programme, the credibility of evaluations would be improved if they could be based on the work of independent consultants. The objective of ensuring that Member States' customs administrations "work together as one" justifies intensifying our efforts. This is all the more necessary in view of the coming accession of new Member States and the changes to the external borders of the EU that this will bring with it. To ensure that our common external borders are well managed, facilitating cross-border traffic while controlling risks, it may be necessary to engage in more coordination between the various services concerned and renewed cooperation with our neighbours. The successors to Customs 2002 should be capable of taking suchdevelopments into account.�