EU Regulation 273 2009 has been published, which confirms that national customs administrations and traders have a grace period till 31 December 2010 to implement Import Control System (ICS) & Exit Summary Declaration as part of Export Control System (ECS).

• EU Transitional Measures Regulation 273_2009 (pdf)

Many national Customs administration which have signed the WCO Safe Framework of Standards are implementing advance cargo information including the European Commission with its new Import Control System (ICS) and Export Control System (ECS) that will have to be implemented by 01 January 2011.New EU Transitional Measures Regulation confirms grace period till 31 December 2010 to implement Import Control System (ICS) & Exit Summary Declaration

In order to allow the industry to prepare their systems for compliance, the IATA Cargo Data Interchange Task Force (CDITF) met in December 2008 and identified amendments to the CIMP messages to facilitate compliance with the impending EU Regulations. An official Notice of Amendment was circulated to all the IATA Cargo Service Conference (CSC) Accredited Representatives and the amendments were approved as of 06 March 2009. These amendments will be published in the next edition of the CIMP product.

In summary the key changes are:

• The Other Customs Information Reference (OCI) line is amended to allow conditional inclusion of the ISO Country Code, the Information Identifier and the Customs Information Identifier where at least one of them must be included;
• The Airline Flight Manifest (FFM) message is amended to include additional optional arrival and departure information;
• The Consolidation List (FHL) and Customs Status Notification (CSN) messages are amended to include the OCI line;
• New Information Identifiers and Customs Information Identifiers are added to qualify the information potentially included in the OCI line;
• As a result of these amendments there will be new message versions of:
• Airline Flight Manifest (FFM);
• Air Waybill Data (FWB);
• Unit Load Device Manifest (FUM);
• House Waybill Data (FZB);
• Consolidation List (FHL);
• Customs Status Notification (CSN).

IATA strongly recommends that the industry upgrades to these newer versions to accommodate Customs reporting in a structured manner, not only for the EU but for the other countries that are, or will be, requiring electronic advance cargo information.

The European Member States have officially approved articles that establish a transition period for the implementation of the Import Control System (ICS). This transition period will run until 31 December 2010 and also applies to the provision of the Exit Summary Declaration (EXS) message as specified in the Export Control System (ECS). There is no obligation to implement ICS or the EXS message of ECS during the transition period. However, all other ECS requirements must be met by 1 July 2009.

• EC Transitional Arrangements (pdf)