The most important areas of harmonizing the application of international treaties and acts in the sphere of customs regulation of the Eurasian Economic Union were reviewed at the expert meeting of the Council of Heads of Customs Services of Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States that was held in Ganja (Republic of Azerbaijan) on June 6, 2023. The event was attended by Eldar Alisherov, Minister in charge of Customs Cooperation of the Eurasian Economic Commission.

The EEC Minister noted the significance of the Council of Heads of Customs Services that is one of the most successful and productive platforms for sectoral cooperation in the CIS at large. It coordinates interaction between customs services of the CIS Member States.

 

"The history of the Council's activities demonstrates that the issues under its consideration have important applications," stressed Eldar Alisherov. "For instance, this is unification of customs rules and document forms for the purposes of customs clearance and control, arrangements for exchanging statistics in foreign trade, coordination of efforts by customs services to retrofit customs border infrastructure and law enforcement cooperation."

 

  

During the meeting, the parties took decisions on a number of customs interaction issues; among other things, they addressed the matter of accelerating the internal legal procedures and approvals to enable signing of the Agreement on the Procedure for Sealing and Stamping Transport and Commercial Documents by the CIS countries customs authorities. Adoption of the document will allow cargoes to pass borders more quickly and eliminate the existing differences in the document control procedures.

 

The adopted decisions concerning an optimized structure of the common CIS Commodity Nomenclature of Foreign Economic Activities will allow to generate reliable customs statistics for all Member States, ensure consistent application of customs tariff and non-tariff regulation measures, as well as to avoid possible litigations regarding classification issues.

 

The participants coordinated their positions on the key cooperation areas on the platform of the World Customs Organization.