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WCO News Magazine, Issue 2/2023, No. 101

Working Group Customs & Blockchain

5th Meeting
July 27, 2022 | 9 a.m.

Those interested in joining the Working Group can find more information and sign up for the Working Group distribution list here. In addition, there is a WGCB group on LinkedIn where you are welcome to become a member for a no-obligation exchange.

Your contact person for further inquiries is Tobias Jornitz

Registration for the Working Group Meeting on July 27, 2022

Registration is no longer possible.

How much time is involved in the process itself and in the individual sub-steps? What are the most common problems and their effects? What measures would simplify your day-to-day work? Are regulations, laws and specifications known? These and other questions await you in our short survey. The results will be evaluated and shared with the community free of charge. In addition, Blockchain Europe will work on possible digitalization, simplification and support offers.

The data will be used in anonymized form, so that it is impossible to draw conclusions about the participating person or company. Participation is open until April 15, 2022.

Click here for the survey

With the Working Group Customs and Blockchain, Blockchain Europe wants to create a forum for customs experts to shape the future together in the spirit of open innovation.

What concrete benefits does the blockchain bring to customs authorities and what can these look like in concrete terms, e.g. in the form of a MVP? These and other questions will be discussed next time. we look forward to it.

More about WGCB

“Our goal is joint, end-to-end digital customs processing,” explains Tobias Jornitz from the Blockchain Europe project. As founder of the Working Group Customs and Blockchain, he wants to create a forum for customs experts to shape the future together in the spirit of open innovation. “The working group contributes to the networking of foreign trade and blockchain professionals, enables an exchange on current and future challenges and creates a European vision for customs clearance.”

To this end, the Customs and Blockchain Working Group meets quarterly and gives its members space to openly and proactively share thoughts, discuss ideas and elaborate on topics with experts from other industries. After an initial identification of common “pain points” and discussion of possible solutions using blockchain technology, so-called “focus groups” are now also emerging – small groups that dedicate themselves to a specific issue between official meetings in order to subsequently present their elaborations to the larger group. In this way, the Working Group is taking advantage of its special position at the interface between foreign trade and blockchain technology.

The current 24 members include 17 companies (two from the UK), academic institutions and government agencies. The Working Group is open to other interested parties. Expressions of interest are available via the Blockchain Europe website. The next regular meeting will be held in January 2022.

Want to be part of Woking Group? Register here.

To achieve this goal, the partners want to make all customs documents available in a digital format and thus make paper-based documents obsolete. The blockchain technology is supposed to enable secure storage of all transactions and documents for all parties involved and to update them in accordance with the physical flow of goods. This will make their contents traceable at any time for exporters (consignors of goods), importers (consignees of goods), logistics partners, transport companies, customs brokers, and customs authorities, for example.

First step: Digitalization of the export accompanying document

In a first step, the project focuses on the export accompanying document. The responsible customs office uses this document to confirm that the export is permitted and sends it to the exporter as a PDF. The exporter prints out the document and encloses it with the export consignment.

The consignee in the third country is usually not digitally integrated into the export process and receives a lot of relevant information only when the goods arrive – and often on paper. They then have to reenter the data in digital form for their import declaration.

“Due to the numerous parties involved in the customs process, the current paper-based process for the export accompanying document often causes a great deal of effort,” explains Dr. Ulrich Lison, global trade expert and member of the AEB Board of Directors. “This is exactly the starting point of our project to digitalize the export accompanying document along the entire process.” As a result, all parties involved will gain transparency over the process, manual effort will be reduced, and time-consuming on-site checks can be moved to the digital sphere.

Interactive development process

The project is still in its early stages. To achieve initial results quickly, the partners rely on an agile approach. “Using an agile scrum process, we want to digitalize an initial prototypical customs process,” explains Roman Koller, Customs Subproject Manager at Blockchain Europe.

For further implementation steps, Blockchain Europe is looking for more companies interested to participate – including companies affected by Brexit. Due to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and the resulting need for export and import declarations, the customs topic has become drastically more important in the trade of goods with the UK.

“We would welcome the participation of experts in customs processing as well as companies that are only just starting out in dealing with the challenges of customs clearance in global trade, for example due to Brexit,” explains Roman Koller. “Together with Blockchain Europe, companies can make a contribution to end-to-end digital customs processing and, as validation partners, test the planned prototype processes in practice. Maybe one of the few positive outcomes of Brexit will be an additional impetus for digitalization.”

About Blockchain Europe

Blockchain Europe has been set up as a project to establish a European blockchain institute. The project is funded with 7.7 million euros by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The project consortium includes the Dortmund Fraunhofer Institutes IML and ISST as well as the Chair of Enterprise Logistics and the Chair of Materials Handling and Warehousing at the TU Dortmund University. Following the project period, it is to be established as a sustainable and permanent facility.

About AEB

AEB software supports the global trade and logistics processes of businesses in the industrial, commercial, and service sectors. More than 5,500 customers are using AEB solutions in 80 countries for shipping, transport and warehouse management, customs clearance, import and export management, sanctions list screening, and export controls. AEB’s portfolio extends from ready-to-go software products from the cloud to a tailored but highly adaptive logistics platform.

AEB has more than 500 employees. The software company has its main offices and on-site data centers in Stuttgart (Germany). Weitere deutsche AEB-Standorte gibt es in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, München, Soest, Mainz und Lübeck. AEB has international offices in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and the United States. More information: www.aeb.com

Press contact:

AEB SE

Jens Verstaen
Corporate Communications
Phone +49 (0)89 14 90 267 16
jens.verstaen@aeb.com
www.aeb.com

Blockchain Europe

Britta Scherer
Communications and Community Management
Phone +49 (0)231 9743 413
britta.scherer@iml.fraunhofer.de
https://blockchain-europe.nrw/