Customs classification, circular economy and environmental goods

The customs classification is one of the three pillars of the customs obligation. But it could play an interesting role in the enforcement of the European- and hopefully global- “green customs”

Indeed, according to WCO (World Customs Organization – The fifth symposium in the WCO Symposia Series on “Visualising a greener HS to support environmentally sustainable trade”, supported by the European Union, was held on 23 January 2023) statements:

• sustainable goods to support a circular economy transition are increasing;
• the technology sector is a rapidly changing area, meaning that today’s environmentally preferable technology can quickly become obsolete and overtaken by newer and better technology;
• It is not possible to separately identify all goods in the HS, so to include anything, it was necessary to know what was of most importance to include;
• the process of understanding why something is important in terms of the effect of its use on the environment helps to give a better chance of developing an HS description that captured the right types of goods and was workable at the border;
• need of monitoring the development of the market and technologies;
• need of taking into account the externalities related to the production of goods;
• recycled materials and machinery and equipment used in the recycling industry as environmental goods;
• the concepts of environmental goods in terms of renewability, energy efficiency, low car-bon/pollution, and energy transition;
• adding a new chapter to identify the status of goods or amending current chapters in order to cap-ture the status of goods;

The HS system will be an important chance to enforce the green customs framework and will remain one of the main points for the delivery and the maintenance of the AEO authorization.