OCEAN Board met in Brussels

Customs affairs, taxation and veterinary affairs high on the agenda

The OCEAN Board met in Brussels to dicuss a long range of current topics which impact on the European Maritime and ship supply industry including customs & taxation affairs as well as veterinary issues. The "name and shame" list proposed by the EU Commission under THESIS was also analysed.

Representatives from over 15 European maritime nations came together in Brussels at the end of October to discuss progress on the most pressing issues affecting the ship supply industry currently, ranging from customs to taxation and veterinary affairs.
"Future EU legislative reform, whether in customs, taxation, maritime, transport or veterinary affairs must contribute to the competitiveness of EU businesses, this is the message we want to send to the EU decision maker" said Stefan Ericson, chairman of OCEAN after the Board meeting.
Acting Chairman of OCEAN's Working Group on Customs & taxation, Alfredo Pinto, which met a day earlier, said: "Customs across the EU need to pursue trade facilitation by aligning customs procedures and compliance models. We need a risk-based, well targeted and unobtrusive controls, carried out once and valid across the EU. Ship supplier need to implement EU-wide IT systems that facilitate fast, cheap and predictable border crossing and clearance anywhere in the EU and interact with other EU IT systems outside customs, e.g. indirect taxation IT system like EMCS".
Chairman of the Veterinary Working Group Dick Peterse said that there was a very productive way of exchanging views on the organization of veterinary checks on products entering the EU, an issue of high importance for ship suppliers: "For OCEAN, it is important to come to a   more simplified and flexible legislation by putting the Directive’s contents to the test, notably where it concerns the working environment of our industry (articles 12 and 13). Items/articles of the directive which should be rewritten in our opinion include the Storage system, Control & monitoring system, Storage regime EU approved & for transit approved products, Supply to vessels outside EU territory with a veterinary certificate, missing veterinary certificates, 100% entrepot exit control" he stressed.
Following the error in the German translation of the word “ship supply” in EU Regulation 430/2010, the WG Customs & Taxation wish to establish a list of the correct word for ship supply in each EU community language and post this on the OCEAN Website so that there will be no translation problems in the future.