Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Union legal framework for customs infringements and sanctions

Despite the fact that customs legislation is fully harmonised, its enforcement, which ensures compliance with the customs rules and the lawful imposition of sanctions, lies within the ambit of Member States' national law. Consequently, customs legislation enforcement follows 28 different sets of legal rules and different administrative or legal traditions. This means that Member States can impose sanctions that seem appropriate to them as penalties for infringements of certain obligations stemming from the harmonised Union customs legislation.

Such sanctions differ in nature and severity according to the Member State that is competent for it. Namely, they are of different types (e.g. fines, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, temporal or permanent disqualification from the practice of industrial or commercial activities), irrespective their nature, and even when assuming the same type and nature, like for instance a fine, have different levels/ranges from Member State to Member State.

An overview of the situation regarding Member States' customs infringements and sanctions systems took place through a Project Group established, on a voluntary basis, by the Commission with 24 Member States, under the Customs 2013 Program. This Project Group analysed the 24 national regimes for customs infringements and related sanctions and reported back to the Commission.

Differences in infringements to the customs legislation and sanctions have implications at several levels:
- from an international point of view, the different sanctioning systems existing in the Member States raise some concerns in certain WTO Member States regarding the compliance of the European Union with its international obligations in this field;
- within the European Union, the different enforcement of customs legislation makes the effective management of the customs union harder, as the same non-compliant behaviour may be treated in very different ways in each Member State;
- for the economic operators, the differences in the treatment of infringements of Union customs legislation have an impact on the level playing field which should be inherent to the Internal Market, thus providing an advantage for those who breach the law in a Member State with lenient legislation for customs sanctions. This situation also has an impact on the access to customs simplifications and facilitations or to the process of being granted the AEO status as the criterion referring to compliance with customs legislation and the absence of serious infringements as a condition for obtaining the AEO status, is interpreted in a different way by national legislations.

In order to tackle those problems, the proposal sets a common legal framework for the treatment of customs infringements and sanctions, bridging the gap between different legal regimes through a common platform of rules and thus contributing to an equal treatment between economic operators in the EU, as well as the effective protection of the Union's financial interests and law enforcement in the field of customs.

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)884: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:884:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2013)513: Executive summary of the impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2013:513:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2013)514: Impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2013:514:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2013)515: Implementation plan http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2013:515:FIN

ESO: Background information: Commission proposes a common approach to violations of EU customs law http://www.europeansources.info/record/press-release-commission-proposes-a-common-approach-to-violations-of-eu-customs-law/

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