EU enables remote customs clearances - no hard borders - in Austria

You will have missed it – it’s slipped right off the main news radar – but the EU is just enabling all customs clearances and taxes for all goods entering and leaving the EU through the Italian port of Trieste to be paid, accounted and administered in the small Austrian town of Fürnitz, some 200km away. Yes, that’s right. Trieste customs will now be based in Austria. 

During the pilot phase, the organisers wrote

Trieste has a harbor with a space problem due to the narrow coastal area towards the city. Fürnitz is ideally located at the junction of the Baltic-Adriatic axis (Gdansk-Warsaw-Vienna-Villach-Trieste-Venice-Bologna) and the Tauern axis (Munich-Salzburg-Villach-Ljubljana-Zagreb-Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul). In order to prevent delays in customs clearance and to reduce the burden on the environment, the Interreg project Smartlogi now wants to work on new forms of intelligent logistics, which should, among other things, enable a cross-border customs corridor.

The port of Trieste has a great interest in passing on goods as quickly as possible, since the area is limited by the nearby city of Trieste. Inevitably, loads are loaded onto trucks and transported across the streets. Numerous administrative and technological challenges currently prevent a so-called “modal shift” (shifting traffic from one mode of transport to the other) from road to rail.

In the Smartlogi project, the LCA in Fürnitz, which is perfectly connected to the various main traffic routes, would like to develop into a close cooperation partner of the Port of Trieste. The project is being funded with a total volume of approx. 1.3 million euros from the Interreg program Austria-Italy. In addition, the equity shares of the Carinthian project partners are being co-financed by the Carinthian Economic Development Fund (KWF).

‘Intelligent logistics’ and ‘customs corridors’ mean that borders don’t actually have to be located at borders, and that queues of trucks and containers can easily be avoided with advance clearances, computer tracking and so on – so that customs clearances are just an information exchange formality, rather than the physical impounding and holding of objects and vehicles at ports and border crossings. 

ORF reported yesterday

Great opportunity for Fürnitz

This is definitely a great opportunity for Fürnitz, said economic officer Ulrich Zafoschnig (ÖVP). He had received information from the Ministry of Finance that the necessary intergovernmental agreements should be made in September. Theoretically, customs clearance in Fürnitz could start this year, according to Zafoschnig.

If this can be done for Trieste, why not for Ireland? Why can’t Ireland’s custom clearance point be in Calais, or Hamburg even? Why shouldn’t there be a customs corridor from Dublin to Dover?

I rather think this proves that the Irish Border Issue isn’t actually an issue. I wonder if anyone’s told Mr Robbins that he doesn’t have to surrender the UK’s sovereignty to Brussels after all?