In 2023, the European Commission published a proposal for the European Union customs reform, which is to be the biggest and the most ambitious change in the EU customs law since the establishment of the EU Customs Union in 1968.

The reform intends to address current challenges, such as a huge increase in e-commerce, by reducing and simplifying customs procedures and introducing artificial intelligence in the customs supervision of goods. 

As regards e-commerce, while the current approach puts the responsibility on the individual (customer), under the reform the fiscal burden will be placed on online platforms (such as eBay, Amazon, AliExpress, etc.), i.e., they will be responsible for payment of customs duties and VAT by collecting them at the point of purchase. Customers will, thus, no longer be burdened with paperwork when they receive a parcel.

The reform also simplifies the calculation of customs duties for the most common low-value goods by classifying these goods, otherwise falling under a number of customs tariff headings, into 4 categories. This will ease the administrative burden related to approx. a billion of e-commerce import transactions each year.

An “EU Customs Data Hub” will be established, which will replace the existing customs IT infrastructure in the EU Member States. Thus, traders will be required to interact with a single portal. The most trusted traders will be able to release their goods into circulation into the EU without active customs intervention. Artificial intelligence will analyze the data and predict any potential problems even before the goods get dispatched to the EU. Pursuant to the proposal, the Data Hub will open at first for e-commerce consignments in 2028, and will become mandatory for all customs operations from 2038 onwards.

The proposal is available at:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=comnat%3ACOM_2023_0257_FIN