Eldar Alisherov, Minister in charge of Customs Cooperation of the Eurasian Economic Commission, attended the meetings of the Council of the World Customs Organization (WCO) at its headquarters in Brussels (Belgium).

“The Commission’s participation in the annual meetings of the WCO Council is a relevant area of activities for the EEC Customs Cooperation Unit that allows establishing a constructive dialogue with the international customs community and international organizations involved in improving customs regulation and simplifying trade procedures,” Eldar Alisherov noted.

The event participants reviewed WCO reports on work in 2023–2024 in such areas of international customs cooperation as institutional development, tariff issues (origin, valuation, and classification of goods), compliance with legislation and trade facilitation issues, WCO policy, and finance.

The key topics of the meetings covered improvement of customs administration tools, interaction between customs authorities, trade procedure simplification, and reporting on the activities of the WCO working bodies.,

According to Eldar Alisherov, the prospects for such cooperation are obvious — the Council ensures the highest degree of consistency and uniformity in the customs systems of the Member States; issues of developing and improving the customs technologies and customs legislation in this regard are explored. Moreover, the Commission, as a WCO observer, is forming a positive image of the Eurasian Economic Union in the international customs community.

The cooperation of the Commission with the WCO Council, and the EEC representatives’ participation in the meetings of WCO technical committees provided for in the Memorandum of Understanding between the EEC and the WCO dated June 17, 2016, will continue.