Customs clearance
Customs declaration | Clearance procedure | Customs debt | Customs brokers

 

General principle

Any merchandise, which is traded with a non EU country (import or export), must be followed up by a customs declaration. The main elements which must be included are the origin, tariff category and the customs value of the merchandise. After clearance, the goods will be assigned a specific legal status, called customs procedure.

The declaration is not required in the following cases :

During the declaration, the person declaring must supply some administrative documents such as :

To do his customs declaration, the person declaring will use the Single Administrative Document (SAD)

 

The Single Administrative Document

The SAD takes the form of a booklet of 8 sheets including 54 headings. The enormous advantage is that it can be used whatever the customs regime and the fact that it is common to all the EFTA countries (European Free-Trade Area - Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland). Many other countries have also adopted this document, such as the Eastern European countries.

The operator completes all or part of the sheets depending on the type of operation :

Depending on the movement contemplated, the SAD uses the following names and initials : The numbers from 0 to 9 denote the procedure :