Customs compliance is no longer a matter of following static rules. Geopolitical shifts, new EU legislation, and a fast-moving digital agenda are reshaping what "compliant" even means, and the pace of change shows no sign of slowing down.
Our recent webinar, Strengthening Customs Compliance, brought together Daan De Vlieger (customs, excise and international trade expert), Christian Happel (VP Product at Customs4trade) and Ludo Demeyere (Director of Strategic Customer Engagement at Customs4trade) to unpack what is driving this shift, what the UCC reform and EU Customs Data Hub actually mean in practice, and how technology can help businesses move from reactive compliance to being in control. This blog post breaks down the key insights, poll results and practical takeaways from the session.
The forces reshaping customs compliance
Shifting trade balances, an expanding web of free trade agreements, the EU's sustainability agenda, the race for critical raw materials, and ongoing conflict are all converging to put pressure on global trade, and on the people who need to keep it compliant.
Next to that, there is a lot of regulatory change going on: the Industrial Accelerator Act, CBAM, deforestation regulation, EU excise reform, new and revised free trade agreements, and the removal of the low-value consignment exemption alongside the new three euro flat rate for e-commerce introduced this July. Anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations are at record levels, and sanctions packages continue to expand.
The common thread across all of this is a regulator that is becoming more digital and more assertive about enforcement. It is becoming harder to stay under the radar, and businesses are being pushed to fund automation, build robust trade compliance programmes, break down internal silos between customs, finance, environmental and supply chain teams, and rationalise the way they invest in systems rather than solving the same data problem two or three times.
When we asked webinar registrants about their biggest customs compliance challenge right now, keeping up with regulatory change came out on top, with UCC reform close behind. As one of our speakers put it, that was no surprise. It matched exactly what the session set out to address.
UCC reform: the two changes that matter most
Much of the regulatory noise ultimately traces back to one thing: the reform of the Union Customs Code, described in the webinar as the most significant overhaul of the EU customs landscape since the customs union itself was established.
Underneath all the detail, two structural changes carry the whole reform.
A genuine EU Customs Authority. For the first time, the EU will have a central operational agency, not just a policy body steering member states from Brussels. It will support and to some extent direct member states, run central analysis, and push for coordinated action when risks are spotted in one country. National authorities keep local execution, control on the ground and penalty follow-up, but will need to gradually give up some of the competencies they hold today.
A central EU Customs Data Hub. Instead of data flowing through national systems as it does today, multiple parties, the importer, the logistics provider, the last mile courier, e-commerce platforms, will feed data directly into one central hub. National authorities and even other regulatory bodies (phytosanitary, for example) will tap into that same hub, moving towards a genuine single window at the authority side.
This is a fundamental shift away from today's model, where one party tries to collect as much data as possible and submits a single file after the fact. Under the new model, goods are only released once the full data set in the hub is complete, fed in close to real time by all parties involved.
Quite a few open questions remain. The exact data set is not yet finalised, though early signals suggest it will be broader than today's EU data model, likely pulling in more non-customs data such as CBAM references. It is also unclear whether submitting underlying documents to the hub will become the default rather than something only requested case by case.
Regarding timing, draft legislative texts are expected to be published in Q4 2026, with implementing measures likely following in the course of 2027. Full rollout stretches out to 2034, but the first concrete milestone, data hub usage for e-commerce, is targeted for mid-2028. Given that the tender to actually build the hub only opened this spring, that date should be treated as ambitious rather than certain.
One further shift worth flagging: under the reformed UCC, importers will need to be established in the EU or represented by a fully liable indirect representative, who will take on regulatory compliance liability as well as customs debt liability. Expect representatives to become more selective about that role, and expect more businesses to explore setting up a dedicated EU entity or working with a service provider that keeps them in control of their own compliance, rather than handing it off entirely.
How CAS is preparing for the data hub
With so much still undecided in the legislative text, building specifically for the data hub today is difficult. What can be assessed is how well-positioned a platform is to adapt once the details are clear, and CAS's architecture holds up well against that test for four reasons.
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CAS already connects to more than 30 different authority systems across ports, excise, movement control and declaration filing, so integrating with a new API-based data hub once it goes live should be a fast, familiar exercise rather than a rebuild.
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The product is also built directly on the EU customs data model, meaning the majority of the data the hub will need is already captured today.
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Because CAS already ingests and reports on data pulled from multiple external systems, it is well placed to help importers reconcile data submitted by other parties such as carriers, an issue the reformed model will make far more common.
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And the platform is architected for real time, bidirectional data exchange, which is exactly the model the data hub is built around.
In short, CAS will not have all the answers until the data hub's technical details are published, but the underlying structure is already built for that world.
What about VAT?
While duty collection under UCC reform is expected to stay with member states, VAT could follow a different path. Drawing a parallel with how IOSS shifted e-commerce VAT collection away from the customs declaration process, there is a reasonable chance the same approach eventually gets applied more broadly.
Where technology fits: from dependency to control
The second half of the webinar shifted from regulation to practice: what does actually strengthening compliance look like day to day?
Three shifts stood out.
From scattered to unified. Many businesses still run customs processes in Excel, tracking special procedures, stock movements and declarations across disconnected spreadsheets. Regulators are actively pushing away from this. In the UK, for example, HMRC is driving businesses towards automated, continuously tracked systems.
From lagging to real time. Customs authorities themselves are investing in technology, including AI-driven risk analysis capable of screening far higher volumes of declarations than manual review ever could. Businesses relying on manual, reactive processes will increasingly be the exception rather than the norm.
From dependency to control. Rather than chasing a broker or carrier for a status update when a shipment is stuck at port, direct connections to customs systems and, eventually, the data hub give businesses real time visibility into exactly what is happening and where.
A concrete example from the session: one client processes around 70,000 import, export and UK double-filing declarations a year with a team of two people, and used that efficiency to offer DDP terms to customers immediately after Brexit, turning a compliance challenge into a genuine commercial advantage.
We asked attendees how long it would take them to produce an audit report today. Answers were split fairly evenly between a few minutes and more than two weeks, a good proxy for how consolidated or how scattered a business's customs data currently is. As our speaker noted, a few minutes usually means a duty management system is already doing the heavy lifting; two weeks or more usually points to a complex web of brokers and manual processes across multiple countries.
Inside CAS: how the platform supports compliance
CAS connects to ERP and warehouse management systems (or middleware), ingesting transactional data. That data feeds a set of connected modules: customs declarations, special procedures and stock management, tax warehousing and excise movements, and reporting and insights. From there, CAS communicates directly and bidirectionally with customs authorities, sending declarations and instructions out, and receiving statuses and confirmations back, rather than data flowing one way into a black box.
Excise remains a good example of why national connections still matter even as the data hub develops. Excise law stays national, and definitions vary: coffee is an excise product in Belgium, while in the Netherlands the equivalent falls under a consumer tax on products like orange juice. CAS maintains direct connections to the relevant national systems (such as IDMS in Belgium and CDS in the UK) alongside EMCS at both EU and national level, so this complexity is handled without extra manual work.
Beyond the declaration itself, CAS also handles the surrounding obligations that keep expanding: transit documents, safety and security declarations, and country-specific requirements such as France's ELO reference and barcode requirement for every export to the UK. Bringing these in-house, rather than relying on multiple external parties to submit consistent data, is exactly the kind of control the future data hub model will reward.
On reporting, CAS offers three levels: ready-made reports covering areas like bills of discharge and CBAM, a configurable report builder spanning 250 data elements, and correctly formatted authority submissions such as W5 reporting for excise. Dashboarding functionality also allows customs teams to quantify and demonstrate the value they are delivering, for example, the savings generated through bonded warehousing or preferential origin, making it easier to show the broader business the return on automation investment.
When we asked attendees which single way they would most want technology to strengthen their compliance, real time visibility came out on top, followed by better reporting and having more control over their own data, a result that lines up closely with where CAS invests most of its product development effort.
Preparing for what comes next
The session's closing message was a practical one. Businesses do not need every UCC reform detail finalised to start preparing. What matters now is building the multi-source data visibility, cross-team integration and system agility that the reformed model will require regardless of exactly how the remaining details land.
That means investing in sovereign, EU-aligned digital solutions, breaking down the silos between customs, finance and supply chain, and choosing systems that are architecturally ready to plug into a more connected, real time compliance landscape, rather than systems built solely for how customs works today.
Missed the live session? You can watch the full webinar, including the complete Q&A, the discussion on UCC reform, and the live poll results, on demand at your own pace.
Watch the webinar recording: Strengthening Customs Compliance
Ready to strengthen your customs compliance?
If you want to explore how CAS can help you gain real time visibility, reduce dependency on scattered processes, and prepare for what UCC reform and the EU Customs Data Hub will demand, we would be glad to talk it through.
Get in touch today.
