New customs rules for EU trade on the way

Far-reaching new regulations will affect documentation of goods flowing between the European Union and destinations like South Africa. The United Kingdom’s customs authority, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), describes EMCS as “an electronic EU-wide system designed to replace the existing paper based Administrative Accompanying Document (AAD), relative to the movement of Excise goods”. According to HMRC, “the most significant impact of this new system will be on those businesses involved in receiving excise goods from outside the EU, who prepare a customs entry and wish to forward it on to an excise warehouse with only the excise duty suspended”. Such businesses will have to become authorised as Registered Consignors if they wish to continue dispatching goods from places of importation to excise warehouses with only the excise duty suspended. In order to remove goods arriving from outside the EU to an excise warehouse, with only the excise duty suspended (customs duty having been already paid), they should be entered for clearance using CPC 0700000. Under the new procedures a Registered Consignor, when satisfied that the goods are Customs cleared, must raise an electronic e-AD within EMCS and when the excise warehouse receives the freight, they will discharge the e-AD by acknowledging receipt of the goods via an electronic message back to the registered consignor who is likely to be the original Customs clearance agent.