According to Wieslaw Czyzowicz, a new and important phenomenon has appeared in the recent years in Central European management models. At its basis is collaboration of companies engaged in international commerce by means of legal methods as offered by current customs legislation. Surely, trading companies acted within the law before as well, yet the new interest to legality is based on the companies' wish to minimize customs-related risks – as of now, legislation aims to help businesses given they comply to the main requirement, which is ensuring the security of all processes.
Managers who work for trading companies constantly look for efficient instruments that allow solving any of the emerging problems. Customs law is one of them.
In customs affairs, like any other field, the paradigms have been changing throughout the history. Earlier on, customs legislation was aimed at getting income from taxes. In a sense, this is still true for many countries. Most focus on taxes on imports, yet in some countries, Russia, for instance, this approach is used for some exported goods as well. The next paradigm was the protectionist policy aimed at protecting national economic interests. In XX century, a new problem emerged - customs legislation had to protect the society and citizens from drug trafficking, as well as smuggling of weapons and anything hazardous to the environment. The next stage was when customs legislation focused on developing different countries' economics and the global economy in general. To achieve that, the procedures of international trade were simplified. Towards the end of the XX century, when globalization processes started to rapidly press on, there emerged a need for a new concept of managing international trade. After the tragedy of 9/11 (the terrorist attack in New York), a new paradigm appeared, focused on security and protection from terrorist attacks. With that as a main goal, the customs services became a sort of a common international department. Yet, providing the necessary level of security takes lots of time and effort. In 10 years, the paradigm changed again, and is now focused on both safety and simplification of international commerce procedures.
Nowadays, an average customs deal involves from 20 to 30 parties, about 40 documents and 200 different elements of data. Thus, the customs legislations transformed, and now aim to help manage the risks that are related to the deals.For that reason, they strictly control export and import.
Many risks have to do with the company's need to know their clients. For instance, when working with recognized companies, the risks are at minimum, and if a company is relatively unknown in the market, it has to be checked up on. Other risks are related trading with companies that work with countries under UN and EU embargo:one has to mind certain issues - for instance, which shipping is permitted and which - not.
In any case, managing such risks calls for special instruments. According to Wieslaw Czyzowicz, one of the best recent solutions is the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) concept, which is part of the programs focused on providing better security of the international trade. AEO can be any party involved in the international movement of goods and approved by a national Customs administration as complying with the WCO standards - manufacturers, importers, exporters, brokers, carriers, consolidators, intermediaries, ports, airports, terminal operators and such. This status allows them pass customs faster and move goods quicker, which means lower transport costs, as well as gives them other advantages like filing a common declaration for a certain period or deferred payments of duties, taxes and fees.
