White Papers

"From a Customs perspective, the last decade has been one which has been increasingly characterised by the impact of globalisation in the following areas: rapidly increasing internationalisation and liberalisation of trade – leading to a substantially increased volume of international trade, with the concomitant efficiencies..."

"The tariff is one of the most important customs tools and its use forms part of any customs or trade declaration. Customs officers use the tariff on a daily basis and rely on the information listed in the tariff to perform their daily tasks in accordance to governing rules and procedures. Likewise, traders rely on the tariff when preparing and lodging customs declarations, classifying goods, researching..."

"Single window ambitions play a central feature in many ongoing or proposed border management reform programmes. Current large scale project initiatives with single window ambitions include the European Union’s electronic customs initiative (TAXUD/477/2004) and ASEAN’s commitment to implementing interoperable single window systems by 2012 (ASEAN 2005). However, the single window is also a feature in many other regional and national border reform programmes spanning..."

"An observable trend in international trade policy is the increasing interest in establishing or deepening agreements on Customs Unions. At present there are 11 regional trade agreements that have been notified to the WTO and make explicit reference to the desire of implementing a Customs Union [Figure 2]. These Customs Union agreements..."

"In an increasingly borderless world, organised crime and smuggling are also on the rise. Consequently, stopping and preventing crime and terrorism requires entirely new tools, products and methods that are mobile and can be applied rapidly and across borders. It is not unusual for surveillance and inspection activities to be carried out manually relying..."