The European customs arena : Today and tomorrow

Abstract: Customs services are increasing and becoming more important as global and cross-border trade increases. New trade agreements are developing which changes the prerequisites for actors concerned by the customs market. The customs industry is in many cases old-fashioned where customs service providers are making declarations by hand. The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding about development of customs services based on the parameters: technology, trade blocs, climate issues and customer requirements. This study is based on a deductive approach where a qualitative method has been used for data collection. The data collection has been done by interviewing people from various companies and organizations with significant knowledge within the customs area. With support of the interviews and theoretical learnings a presumptive future of the customs industry has been developed. The results were constructed by assembling learnings from the interviews and are visualized based on the four parameters. Quality and price are important factors that reflect all the respondents’ answers regarding the customer requirements of the industry. Reputation and the opportunity to cover a larger geographical area are also parameters that the respondents mentioned. In the upcoming years there are demands regarding more data integration and digitalization between customs service providers and companies within the industry. This digitalization might help companies to evaluate and use trade agreements. Environment is a topic that is constantly being noticed in all industries, the customs industry as well. Common to the respondents was that climate issues will generate a future of more national and local nature. We see an increased degree of protectionism according to respondent seven. Block chain is a technology that has received increased attention lately, which leading to the question of whether this is something that customs companies should consider. In the future, blockchain may be worth investing in, but at the moment there are several limitations with the technology.