Customs - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements

Budget for 2021-2027

Rationale and design of the programme

The Customs programme supports the essential cooperation between customs authorities across the EU and protects the financial and economic interests of the EU and its Member States. It helps to build a modern and innovative customs union that ensures the safety and security of all EU citizens, all while facilitating growing global trade.

Budget

Budget programming (million EUR):

^{(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.}

  Financial programming:
  - EUR 1.4 million (- 0%)
  compared to the legal basis*

^{* Top-ups pursuant to Art. 5 MFF regulation are excluded from financial programming in this comparison.}

Budget performance – implementation

Multiannual cumulative implementation rate at the end of 2022 (million EUR):

Voted budget implementation (million EUR) ⁽¹⁾:

^{(1) Voted appropriations (C1) only.}

Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

• In 2022, one action contributed directly to climate neutrality: EUR 4.1 million⁽¹⁾ were committed to support the implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, whose aim is to promote climate carbon neutrality by 2050, avoiding carbon leakage and ensuring that EU companies can compete on a level playing field.
• On 13 December 2022, the European Parliament and the Council reached a political agreement on the implementation of the new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Under the political agreement, the mechanism will enter into force in its transitional phase on 1 October 2023 and its implementation will be centralised at the Commission level, as opposed to implementation by the individual Member States. This has led to the fact that the Commission’s cost for developing the mechanism’s information technology system will be substantially higher than initially planned. The entry into force in 2023 urges the kick-start of the related information technology activities.
• In addition, the programme continued supporting the contribution of customs to the Green Deal through the reinforced digitalisation of customs procedures based on the Union Customs Code legal package⁽²⁾, cooperation actions and guidance documents playing a part in the EU’s sustainability objectives. Additionally, the programme accompanied (through a specific group) the development of key upcoming legislation in trade facilitation and customs greening, notably by supporting the area of prohibitions and restrictions related to sustainability and the proposal for an EU Single Window Environment for Customs⁽³⁾ to exchange trade certifications.
• In parallel, in 2022 the programme supported the development of an e-learning course on the use of the EU Customs Single Window Certificates Exchange System for controls of fluorinated greenhouse gases formalities.

^{(1) This amount reflects DG Taxation and Customs Union’s commitments linked to the programme's budget line (i.e. co-delegations to other DGs are excluded).}

^{(2) Union Customs Code – Legislation (europa.eu).}

^{(3) Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the European Union Single Window Environment for Customs and amending Regulation (EU) No 952/2013. The proposal became Regulation (EU) 2022/2399, which entered into force in December 2022 (EUR-Lex – 32022R3299 – EN –EUR-Lex (europa.eu)), https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/eu-single-window-environment-customs_en.}

Gender

Contribution to gender equality (million EUR) (*):

^{(*) Based on the applied gender contribution methodology, the following scores are attributed at the most granular level of intervention possible:}

<sup>- 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality;
- 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective but not as the main reason for the intervention;
- 0: non-targeted interventions (interventions that are expected to have no significant bearing on gender equality);
- 0*: score to be assigned to interventions with a likely but not yet clear positive impact on gender equality.</sup>

The Customs programme’s interventions are split relating to gender equality score as follows:

• Score 0: relates to information technology expenditure, in particular on the development and operation of European electronic systems, which does not target the promotion of gender equality.
• Score 0*: relates to the remaining types of expenditure, i.e. collaboration activities, trainings, studies and communication, for which a potential to promote gender equality has been identified.

At the policy level, the programme’s aim is to support customs cooperation across the EU and within the customs union. DG Taxation and Customs Union takes note of the potential relevance of gender equality in the customs policy domain, among others, in light of the different impacts, challenges and opportunities that customs and trade policies can have on people, and of the importance of diversity and inclusion regarding the performance and quality of service within customs administrations.

At the same time, the programme has implemented an internal tracking mechanism in its Activity Reporting Tool, which enables the identification of collaborative activities with a link to gender equality.

Based on this tracking, it can be confirmed that no program interventions took place in 2021 or 2022 regarding gender equality. For the time being, no interventions have been planned or identified for 2023.

In the general collaborative actions a total of 2 979 participants identified themselves as female and 3 101 as male⁽¹⁾.

^{(1) The main beneficiaries of the programme are the customs authorities in the participating countries who decide at their own discretion to whom they delegate the specific programme events according to the activity’s agenda and objectives. The figures relate to the 0* activities in 2022, even if none of them were identified has having gender equality impact. The data reflects the information available in the Activity Reporting Tool as of 23.2.2023.}

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

• The programme allocates the majority of the budget to information technology, defined as the top priority in the programme’s regulation (recital 16). Among the information technology capacity-building actions supported by the programme, the top priority is given to the European electronic systems that are necessary for the implementation of the customs union and for customs authorities to carry out their mission.
• Regarding the amounts committed in 2021 for digital goals, due to the overlapping of the two iterations of the programme, the budget was split between the two programmes. The amount above covers information technology procurement only, excluding collaborative activities on e-Customs given their minimal budget use.
• In 2021, EUR 116.5 million were committed to information technology procurement from the Customs programme (2021-2027) for the period July to December 2021. In this regard, in 2021 an additional amount of EUR 0.05 million were committed from the previous iteration of the programme (Customs 2020), between January and June 2021. In 2022, the committed expenses for the development and maintenance of European electronic systems were EUR 125.3 million (January to December). This represents an increase of roughly 7% in overall committed budget to information technology procurement under the programme between 2021 and 2022, which is broadly an acceptable fluctuation in information technology expenditure expected across the multiannual financial framework, particularly in the context of high inflation (see paragraph below).
• In 2022, the high inflation required close monitoring of the scheduled budget for 2022 and remains the centre of attention in 2023, especially in terms of costs linked with ensuring the development and functioning of the European electronic systems for customs. In this context, the Commission assessed the actual information technology spending against initial information technology budget allocations. Thanks to savings in the Import Control System 2 project, and by balancing the internal allocation of budget between the Customs and the Fiscalis programmes for those systems that are co-financed by the two programmes, the increasing costs of information technology activities could be partially compensated, allowing for new priority projects such the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism to progress.

Budget performance – outcomes

• 2022 was the first full year of implementation of the Customs programme following the adoption of the programme regulation in March 2021. Throughout the year, the programme continued supporting the customs union and customs authorities to work together as one, also supporting the tackling of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, the remaining effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
• In particular, the programme’s collaborative activities provided forums to exchange among the Member States and between the Member States and the Commission on various aspects of trade and customs policy measures and their operational implementation related to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. In addition, the participation of Ukraine in the programme was secured to reinforce the support to their customs authority in the midst of the crisis.
• Overall, the performance indicators’ progress is on track compared to the set milestones and targets, with some exceptions which can be explained by methodological changes in the collection of data (e.g. the number of officials trained), by the new programme’s modernised implementation concepts or by external factors.
• In terms of number of officials trained, the data owner has improved their data collection methods since 2021. As such, the data provided is no longer in line with the milestone. The new data collection relies on a central database (‘Customs & Tax EU Learning’ portal) as opposed to previous inputs by individual Member States. The milestones/target will be adjusted in the next reporting cycle and once the new data collection method is further crystallised.
• The number of actions in the area of EU law and policy is lower than the milestone that have been set based on the experience of the previous programme. The new programme’s approach however has changed and, compared to micro actions in the previous programme, the new approach favours more inclusive, macro actions. Hence, fewer actions are established, while the actual volume of activity behind these actions is at a stable high level. Furthermore, this milestone could only be based on the extrapolation of the data from the first month of implementation of the collaborative actions (December 2021) that is proving to be unrepresentative of a full year. A review of the milestones and targets of this indicator in 2024 should ensure its adaptation to the new programme realities, as anticipated in the 2021 programme statements.
• Following the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, an increased number of physical meetings took place in 2022, while online collaboration remained strong. The increasing proportion of physical meetings allowed closer human interaction and networking. This had a positive impact on the networking opportunities created by the programme: close to 80% of the participants in the various activities reported strong satisfaction with this aspect. With the programme in full swing, the collaboration activities bore a high number of outputs/recommendations that were reported as useful and well used in the administrations.
• In 2022, the support to the development of the European digital customs environment remained a focal point of the programme (71 systems supported), as well as a top priority in the customs union. Despite the impact of high inflation in information technology procurements contracts supported by the programme, in 2022 the availability of the operational European electronic systems supported by the programme remained close to 100% and reaching the scheduled 99.6% ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of customs throughout the EU.
• The availability of the common communication networks (CCN and CCN2) was just below the milestone, which was mostly due to planned unavailability to install patches and upgrades, but some of the unavailability was unplanned and caused by network issues. However, the availability, even if below the milestone, can be considered as acceptable by information technology standards. It is supported by the use of the systems that continued to grow in terms of both number of messages exchanged and records consulted.
• The progress on the development of the information technology systems relevant for the Union Customs Code has slowed down since 2021, which translated to a Union Customs Code completion level of five percentage points under the 2022 scheduled values. This is due to Member States’ delays to connect their national systems to the European common components, which blocks further progress on the EU side. Given that Member States have asked for derogations and that these have been granted, it is expected that this indicator’s value will remain under the milestones set in the next years. Despite these delays, the current planning to reach the final (legal) target of 100% delivery of the 17 Union Customs Code systems by the end of 2025 is still within reach, unless Member States incur further delays in the coming years.
• In parallel, it is worth highlighting that in 2022 the Internal Audit Service positively assessed DG Taxation and Customs Union’s performance management system, including that of the Customs and Fiscalis programmes. More specifically, the Internal Audit Service’s final report concluded that the performance management system put in place by DG Taxation and Customs Union is adequately designed, efficient and effective, enabling to plan, monitor and report on its achievements. No critical or very important issues were found, and the improvements suggested were already addressed in the current reporting exercise to ensure data consistency and alignment among the various reporting exercises.

Contribution to the sustainable development goals