The Challenge: Safeguarding consignments
The recent enlargement of the EU brought the external borders of the Union
directly towards the state borders of the West Balkans countries. These
countries are now directly confronted with neighbours implementing EU rules
with regard to the flow of goods (and persons).
The compliance with EU regulations becomes increasingly necessary in
West Balkans as the stabilization of the political climate and the prospect
of membership to the EU will increase trading volume and transactions.
In this context, customs have a significant role in safeguarding consignments
from and to West Balkans.
The Need: Balance between trade facilitation and trade control
Customs Administrations are faced with a complex range of challenges.
The prime responsibilities remain the collection of revenues and the
protection of society, but these demanding tasks must be performed
effectively and efficiently, whilst at the same time facilitating the
flow of legitimate goods.
Customs Administrations face the challenge of facilitating the movement
of legitimate consignments hile applying controls to detect customs
fraud and other offences, within the context of high volume of
transactions and the impossibility of inspecting all f them due to
limited resources. The key to achieving an appropriate balance between
trade facilitation and trade control is the effective application of the
principles of risk management.
The Current Situation: Difficulties in the identification of risk profiles
Risk Management is the systematic application of management
procedures and practices providing Customs with the necessary information
to address movements or consignments which present a risk.
Risk management in Customs organisations is based primarily on risk
profiles, i.e. predetermined combinations of risk indicators, based on
information which has been gathered, analyzed and categorized. Risk
profiles are typically identified by analysing past data about movements
of goods and the parties involved in them. The identification of risk
profiles involves processing of large complicated datasets.
This large volume of information is currently analysed mostly by human
experts and in an ad-hoc manner to produce risk profiles. Such an
analysis is time-consuming and essentially targeted towards particular
types of associations between variables that the expert deems
lkely to hide an offence.
