US Welcomes WTO Ruling On EU Customs Administration

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

20 June 2006

Deputy US Trade Representative, Peter Allgeier on Friday announced that a WTO dispute settlement panel had issued a report shining a spotlight on the lack of uniform administration of customs laws in the European Union.

The report relates to a dispute brought by the United States in March 2005.

The United States claimed that the administration of EC customs law by 25 different agencies (one for each of the member States), coupled with a lack of any procedures or mechanisms to reconcile the divergences that inevitably occur on important matters including classification and valuation, represented a violation of the EC’s obligation to administer its customs laws in a uniform manner.

The WTO panel stated on Friday that the EC had breached its WTO obligations, finding the EC system of customs administration to be "complicated and, at times, opaque and confusing".

"Today’s panel report calls attention to a serious trade facilitation problem in the EC," Ambassador Allgeier said. "The obligation to administer customs laws in a uniform manner goes back almost 60 years, to the original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade."

He continued:

"A system of customs administration that varies from region to region across the territory of a WTO Member makes the world trading system less efficient and is especially vexing to small traders, as the panel itself noted. If each of the 50 U.S. States administered U.S. customs law through a separate agency, with no central authority to ensure uniformity, there would be no end to the complaints by other WTO Members."

"The EC, as a WTO Member in its own right, must be held to no less a standard."

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