Customs - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements

Budget for 2021-2027

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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):

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  Financial programming:
  - EUR 12.9 million (- 1%)
  compared to the legal basis*

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

Budget performance – implementation

Cumulative implementation rate at the end of 2023 (million EUR):

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Voted budget implementation (million EUR) ^(*):

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Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

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• In 2023, one action contributed directly to climate neutrality: EUR 0.055 million⁽¹⁾ was 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 entered into force in its transitional phase on 1 October 2023 and its implementation is centralised at the Commission level, as opposed to implementation by the individual Member States. 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, cooperation actions and guidance documents playing a part in the EU’s sustainability objectives ⁽²⁾. 
• Following the entry into force of Regulation (EU) 2022/2399 establishing the EU single window environment for customs in December 2022, the related digital system financed by the Customs programme (the EU Customs single window certificates exchange system) directly contributed in 2023 to trade facilitation and customs greening, by allowing customs and non-customs authorities to automatically exchange and verify information on EU non-customs formalities accompanying customs declarations in the area of prohibitions and restrictions related to sustainability.  
• In parallel, in 2023 the programme supported the development of a series of e-learning activities which contributed to green priorities:  
  • One nanolearning session as an introduction to CBAM.  
  • Seven e-learning modules on the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism: one on the general aspects of the mechanism, with an emphasis on its customs perspective, together with six sector-specific modules that explain the criteria for calculating Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism emissions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and carbon leakage in each of the relevant sectors (fertilisers, aluminium, iron–steel, electricity, hydrogen and cement). 
  • Ten Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism webinars: six for each specific Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism sector, one for national competent authorities and three for the declarant portal usage.  
  • Two e-learning modules (one for customs officers and another for economic operators) on the use of the EU Customs single window certificates exchange system for controls of fluorinated greenhouse gases formalities. In particular, the training sessions described how these formalities and measures are integrated into TARIC (the integrated tariff of the EU, a multilingual database integrating all measures relating to EU customs tariffs and commercial and agricultural legislation), and how this integration impacts the process of filling in the customs declaration. 

^{(1) This amount reflects DG Taxation and Customs Union’s commitments linked to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism under the Customs programme’s budget line. In addition, in 2023 various commitments were done under the specific Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism budget line, i.e. independently from the Customs programme.}

^{(2) Commitments for these actions are not included in the table, as they were not tracked in accrual-based accounting. They are part of a cluster of activities, such as framework contracts or grants, that in its majority does not contribute to climate mainstreaming.}

Gender

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

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The Customs programme’s interventions are split relating to the 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, training sessions, 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 programme interventions took place in 2021, 2022 or 2023 regarding gender equality. For the time being, no interventions have been planned or identified for 2024. 

^{(3) The main beneficiaries of the programme are the customs authorities in the participating countries. In particular for the collaborative activities grant, customs authorities 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 a specific type of the 0* activities in 2023, even if none of them were identified as having gender equality impact. The data reflects the information available in the activity reporting tool as of 3 February 2024.}

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

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• The programme allocates the majority of the budget to digital administration, 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. In that respect, the programme has strong synergies with the European Commission’s horizontal priority on digital transition.  
• The amount above covers information technology procurement only, excluding collaborative activities on e-Customs given their minimal budget use.  
• In 2023, EUR 113.4 million was committed to information technology procurement from the Customs programme. This represents a decrease of roughly 9.5% in overall committed budget to information technology procurement under the programme compared to 2022, due to delays in planned Import Control System 2 projects. 
• The high inflation levels registered since the start of the current multiannual financial framework require close monitoring of the scheduled budget for 2023 and the remaining years, especially in terms of costs linked with ensuring the development and functioning of the European electronic systems for customs. In this context, the Commission assesses the actual information technology spending against initial information technology budget allocations. 

Budget performance – outcomes

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• Throughout 2023, the programme continued supporting the customs union and customs authorities to work together as one. It also provided a platform for Member States and the Commission to discuss customs policy and its operational implementation on several fronts, such as the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, etc. 
• Security remained a priority, with significant resources devoted to relevant information technology systems and the organisation of collaborative activities on risk management. In addition, through the accession of several countries to the programme, it could contribute to the EU enlargement process.  
• Overall, experience with the programme has now resulted in updates to the targets for some performance indicators. For example, the number of actions in the area of EU law and policy is lower than the initial milestone set. This is because these targets were established based on the experience of the previous programme. The new programme’s approach 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. A review of the milestones and targets has thus resulted in new figures reflective of a leaner, more efficient approach towards the rationalisation of resources. A similar exercise took place for online collaboration groups. 
• Just as in 2022, the number of recommendations and guidelines continued to increase, indicating the clear benefit associated with the actions. Action managers providing feedback explained their difficulties to quantify the number of working practices/guidelines and recommendations, given the wide range of activities supported by the programme and their specificities. The numbers reported can thus be explained given the broad interpretation of the indicator.  
• Following the easing of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, an increased number of physical meetings took place in 2023, 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 for national administrations.  
• In 2023, support to the development of the European digital customs environment remained a focal point of the programme (67 systems supported), as well as a top priority in the customs union. In this respect, the availability of the operational European electronic systems supported by the programme remained close to 100%, thus ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of customs throughout the EU. In addition, the availability of the common communication networks (CCN and CCN2), serving as a platform for the digital systems for customs, remained exceptionally high in 2023 and even reaching 100% for CCN2.  
• The high demand for the use of these networks and systems is confirmed by the number of messages and number of consultations handled by these applications. The number of messages increased in 2023, following several administrations opting for a more nuanced approach towards handling customs declarations and hence increasing the number of entries (primarily impacting the surveillance system). Equally, the number of consultations increased and reached beyond the estimated target, showing the high demand for these systems and their intensive use.  
• The revision of the union customs code work programme in 2023 ⁽⁴⁾ led to an update in the milestones for the work remaining towards its completion. 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 5 percentage points under the 2022 scheduled values. Since most of the work remaining for the union customs code is for transitioning the systems into operations with national administrations, a linear progression is expected here. Based on these assumptions, 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. 
• In 2023, the programme continued to contribute to the Commission’s overall communication efforts to reach out to the public at large and to economic operators impacted by new developments in customs law and policy, supporting business activities and facilitating legitimate trade. This notably included (i) disseminating information about the EU Customs Reform package, (ii) preparing the entry into force of the requirements related to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism transitional application, and (iii) supporting the ongoing Import Control System 2 communication campaign, with the objective of informing economic operators involved in air transportation on adapting their digital systems to the Import Control System 2 release 2. Moreover, synergies between customs and taxation were actively fostered regarding value-added tax on import and the import of excisable goods ⁽⁵⁾. 
• 248 527 customs officials were reported as having been trained in 2023. The figure includes the number of officials completing a course directly in the EU central training portal and the number of officials, as declared on the EU central portal by national administrations, to whom the downloaded courses are made available via the national distribution systems (e.g. national intranets, portals of the national training institutes, etc.) ⁽⁶⁾. 
• The programme continued building synergies with and contributing to the European Commission’s horizontal priorities. 

^{(4) Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/2879 of 15 December 2023 establishing the Work Programme relating to the development and deployment for the electronic systems provided for in the Union Customs Code.} 

^{(5) Such cross-cutting topics were addressed, for example, in the High-level Seminar on e-commerce, a specific meeting of the Risk Management Group targeting financial risk criteria, a working visit on special customs procedures applied to oil fuels in ports at the external border of the EU and another working visit on cooperation between tax and customs authorities and invalidation of the value-added tax number.}  

^{(6) These figures depend heavily on estimates provided by the end users at the time of download regarding the potential number of officials using the courses. For example, some administrations estimate fewer officials who will use individual training courses, others estimate higher numbers. The actual number of officers trained by the downloaded courses is not available. Obtaining this figure would require additional and disproportionate administrative burden, directly in contradiction with the Commission's effort to rationalise reporting obligations.} 

Contribution to the sustainable development goals