Macedonia Hosts WCO European Heads of Customs Conference

The annual Conference of Heads of Customs of the World Customs Organization (WCO) Europe Region, the highest decision-making forum of directors general of customs administrations of the European region, was held in Ohrid, southern Macedonia, on March 15 and 16, 2010.

The conference was hosted by Vanco Kargov, the director general of Macedonian Customs, chaired by Alain Bellot, director general of the Customs Administration of Luxembourg, and attended by delegations of 46 European and Asian Customs Services as well as the representatives of the European Commission, WCO, and the WCO Regional Intelligence Liaison Offices (RILO).

WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya presented a comprehensive report on WCO’s past year activities and focused the discussion on the latest issues and challenges faced by the WCO members’ customs administrations.

Mikuriya stressed the importance of electronic data exchange among WCO member states, further improvement of the integrated border management and the Single Window system, which enables cross-border traders to submit documents such as customs declarations, applications for import/export permits and certificates of origin at a single location.

The participants also talked about the further development of the Regional Training Center (RTC), which WCO opened in Skopje in September 2009, and the establishment of the Regional Office for Capacity Building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Participants also showed an interest to open a WCO RTC in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine.

The next annual conference will take place in Luxembourg.

For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska in our Macedonia office.

Source: Macedonian Customs; WCO