Section 1

All goods intended to be placed under a customs procedure, except for the free-zone procedure, shall be covered by a customs declaration appropriate for the particular procedure. Community goods declared for export, internal Community transit or outward processing shall be subject to customs supervision from the time of acceptance of the declaration referred to in paragraph 1 until such time as they leave the customs territory of the Community or are abandoned to the State or destroyed or the customs declaration is invalidated. Except where Community legislation provides otherwise, Member States shall determine the location and competence of the various customs offices situated in their territory. Member States shall ensure that official opening hours are fixed for those offices that are reasonable and appropriate, taking into account the nature of the traffic and of the goods and the customs procedures under which they are to be placed, so that the flow of international traffic is neither hindered nor distorted. The Commission shall, in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 184(2), adopt measures defining the various roles and responsibilities of competent customs offices, and notably of the following: the customs offices of entry, import, export or exit; the customs offices carrying out the formalities for the placing of goods under a customs procedure; the customs offices granting authorisations and supervising customs procedures. Customs authorities may authorise a person to lodge, or make available, at the customs office responsible for the place where he is established a customs declaration for goods which are presented to customs at another customs office. In such cases, the customs debt shall be deemed to be incurred at the customs office at which the customs declaration is lodged or made available. The customs office at which the customs declaration is lodged or made available shall carry out the formalities for the verification of the declaration, the recovery of the amount of import or export duty corresponding to any customs debt and for granting release of the goods. The customs office at which the goods are presented shall, without prejudice to its own controls for security and safety purposes, carry out any examination justifiably requested by the customs office at which the customs declaration is lodged or made available and shall allow release of the goods, taking into account information received from that office. The measures designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, by supplementing it, laying down in particular, rules in respect of the following: the granting of the authorisation referred to in paragraph 1; the cases in which review of the authorisation is to be carried out; the conditions under which the authorisation is granted; identification of the customs authority competent for the granting of the authorisation; consultation with and provision of information to other customs authorities, where appropriate; the conditions under which the authorisation may be suspended or revoked; the specific role and responsibilities of the competent customs offices involved, particularly in respect of the controls to be applied; the form of, and any time limit for, the completion of formalities, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 184(4). Those measures shall take account of the following: with regard to point (c), where more than one Member State is involved, compliance by the applicant with the criteria laid down in Article 14 for the granting of the status of authorised economic operator, with regard to point (d), the place where the applicant’s main accounts for customs purposes are held or accessible, facilitating audit-based controls, and where at least part of the activities to be covered by the authorisation are to be carried out. The customs declaration shall be lodged using an electronic data-processing technique. The customs authorities may allow the customs declaration to take the form of an entry in the declarant’s records, provided that the customs authorities have access to those data in the declarant’s electronic system and that the requirements for any necessary exchange of such data between customs offices are met. Where this is provided for in the customs legislation, the customs authorities may accept a paper-based customs declaration, or a customs declaration made orally or by any other act whereby goods can be placed under a customs procedure. The Commission shall, in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 184(2), adopt measures for the implementation of this Article.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-11-07 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.