News
The European Commission has set out plans to ease custom formalities for ships - reducing red tape, cutting delays in ports and making the sector more competitive.
Today, freight forwarders and exporters complain that if they chose to send goods across Europe by short sea shipping, the heavy administrative burden at ports causes additional costs and significant delays - ships can wait for hours and sometimes days in ports for customs clearance. These make the maritime sector less attractive compared to other forms of transport, especially road, unnecessarily bringing more trucks on our already congested roads. With the new Commission proposals, shipping transport will face less administrative hurdles and therefore be able to be used to its full potential in the EU internal market and beyond.
Commissioner Algirdas Semeta, responsible for taxation and customs union, has said ''The Blue Belt will bring the single market to the seas. The proposed measures will greatly benefit shipping as they will reduce costs, simplify administration, facilitate trade and create a level playing field between all types of transport. At the same time this will simplify customs' work so they can better target security risks and focus on protecting our citizens and businesses.''
''Blue Belt,'' a Single Transport Area for Shipping, sets out two key proposals to ease formalities for shipping by amending the existing Customs Code (CCIP, Customs Code Implementing Provisions); Easing customs formalities for intra-EU shipping; and Easing customs formalities for ships that call in third country ports.
For this purpose, the commission will bring forward before the end of the year a proposal to create a harmonized electronic cargo declaration. This new ''eManifest'' allows the shipping company to provide in all manifests (intra-EU and extra-EU) information on the status of goods to customs officials.
