If you wish to put your goods on sale on European soil, you must complete the formalities in order to put them in free circulation and make them free to consume, that is, you must pay the customs debt which they are attributed. Similarly, if you wish to export your goods abroad, you must inform the European customs administration either to benefit from help under the Common Agricultural Policy, or in case they might apply external commerce control measures to your product. Those operations, upon entrance or exit from the EU, are called the customs clearance of the merchandise.
To clear merchandise, the firm must make a customs declaration at a customs office. Clearance procedures may be under European regulations, but they remain applied in a national context. We will only, in the appropriate section, discuss the European dispositions. For more information, we advise you to consult your country's customs administration. Professionals may help you in this task. If it is your first occasion in dealing with customs, we strongly advise that you turn to a customs agent , for long enough to acquire some experience.
In the next sections, we deal with the above-mentioned themes linked to clearance :