At the end of June, the German customs administration informed that the customs internal coordination on the implementation of the new definition of the customs exporters concept according to Art. 1 No. 19 UCC-DR (Regulation (EU) 2018/1063 amending Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/2446 to the EU Customs Code (Delegated Act, UCC-DR) published in the EU Official Journal No. L 192) has now been completed in Germany.

Contrary to the previous rule, according to the General Customs Directorate (“Generalzolldirektion” – GZD), it is no longer necessary for the exporter to be the contracting party of the consignee in the third country. The essential characteristics of the exporter are that it is a natural or legal person established in the customs territory of the Union and has and exercises the power of determination over the movement of the goods – this will allow a much more flexible operation of the economic operators.

GZD further submits that in cases where the exporter is different from the exporter, additional checks by the customs office of clearance may be necessary, in particular in the case of risky exports. In individual cases, this could lead to additional time. With the start-up of ATLAS export release 2.4.4 (21st September 2019), a new intermediate coding (“type”) is introduced as an interim solution, which is to be applied if the customs exporter deviates from the export exporter. In this case, the EORI number is mandatory in the “Reference” data field and the branch number is to be entered optionally in the “Additional” data field.

The customs exporter/applicant must therefore promptly provide all the necessary documents and other data on the export right transaction in the event of admissibility checks pursuant to § 14 of the German Foreign Trade Act (German Law) at the request of the customs office.

According to GZD, separate ATLAS information will be published at the appropriate time. The DV E-VSF A 06 10 (German regulations) and the explanations on www.zoll.de will be adapted as soon as possible.

Source: DIHK