1. “Combatting customs fraud”
8 April 2019
Public hearing on
“Combatting customs fraud”
Fight Customs Fraud: Current Challenges
Eva Lindström, Member of the Court of Auditors

2. European Court of Auditors’ work in the area.
What is the scale of customs fraud?
What are best practices in fighting fraud?
What are the challenges?

3. European Court of Auditors’ work in the area.
Annual reports 2013 to 2017
Inefficient post release audits; improve its monitoring of import flows and undervaluation
Special Reports
24/2015 “Tackling intra-Community VAT fraud: More action needed”
19/2017 “Import procedures: shortcomings in the legal framework and an ineffective implementation impact the financial interests of the EU”.
26/2018 “A series of delays in Customs IT systems: what went wrong?”

4. What is the scale of customs fraud?
SR 19/2017
“The Commission has not made an estimate of the customs gap”,
highlighting
“The absence of an estimate of the customs gap (…) prevents an efficient allocation of resources to areas e.g. undervaluation, or Member States where the highest potential losses are identified”
Annual reports 2016 and 2017
Estimated 2,2 billion euros evaded in the period

5. Commission’s and MS operation
Volumes of undervalued goods
Commission’s and MS operation
OLAF operation
MS 1
MS 2
MS 3
MS 4
MS 5
MS 6
MS 7
Nov 2011
Mar 2014

6. What are the challenges?
SR 19/2017
Member States have weak economic incentives to perform customs controls and to improve collection
Uniform application of controls -
EU does not act as one but 28
SR 26/2018
Modern IT systems are key for this.
Commission and Member States are late in implementing IT systems.

7. Thank you for your attention!
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