OREANDA-NEWS. February 1, 2013. In December 2012 the project “Green Channel”, which simplifies goods transportation from the European Union countries (Finland, for the moment) to Russia, turned ten years?

Since then the “Green Channel” with Finland has approved oneself to be a good example of simplification and speed-up of customs operations with the help of preliminary information submission and received a high appraisal of the customs services of Russia and Finland. Today its members are the Finnish companies HANSAPRINT OY, VALIO, KIILTO OY. The delivery of goods from Sweden was carried out in 2003-2004 (by the Swedish companies "Volvo" and "Scania Cvab"). Since the implementation of the project, the Russian Customs Authorities have received more than 25, 586 messages containing preliminary information about goods. Thus, the time spent by a carrier at the checkpoint to fulfill customs procedures was 10-15 minutes maximum (without considering the time, necessary for work of other supervisory authorities). The project enabled to lessen the load on the checkpoints in the Russian-Finnish State border.

Due to the fact that EU member states, such as Italy, Belgium and Poland expressed their interest in organizing such “Green Channels”, which can create favourable conditions for conscientious businessmen, the Russian FCS studied the possibility to increase the number of participants of the “Green Channel” project. Taking into account the position of the European Union on the issue of the information exchange among the customs authorities, further extension of the list of foreign economic activity participants of the project seems difficult.

The fact is that since 2009 the collaboration in the information sphere between Russia and the EU has been mainly based on the preliminary information exchange between the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) and the Russian FCS. The position of the CEC points out the necessity to officially terminate the contracts between certain customs authorities of the EU and the Customs Service of the Russian Federation. The information to be transmitted within the framework of the “Green Channel” project and the information provided by the Commission of the European Communities drastically differs. The Customs Service of Finland submits complete and correct information (almost in the volume of export declaration). It corresponds to the target to simplify customs procedures, enables to avoid the fraud with shipment or commercial documents in the course of goods transportation and, thus, to ensure the accuracy of the information in the declaration. In its turn, the data provided by the CEC is insufficient, especially concerning the information about prices and the description of goods. Thus, such situation makes it impossible to use the data efficiently.

The question of expansion of the "Green Channel" project can be resolved if business representatives under the aegis of business associations and chambers of commerce express their initiative. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation has got considerable experience of collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Finland and highly estimates the “Green Channel”. The experience of Finnish exporters of the goods can become the basis for the creation of “European Green Channel”.

The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation in collaboration with the chambers of industry and commerce of the Euro-zone countries and foreign economic activity participants concerned will take steps to expand positive experience, accumulated during the “Green Channel” project implementation phase. It will enable to simplify and speed-up customs registration and the inspection of goods, transported within the framework of the Russian-European trade.