THE PRESUMPTION OF GOOD FAITH

The presumption of good faith. It remains a working point for the Belgian Customs and Excise Administration.

The presumption of good faith. It remains a working point for the Belgian Customs and Excise Administration.

An importer requests repayment of import duties, anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties in the Netherlands and Belgium. The legal basis and the facts underlying the repayments requests are completely identical. The importer also has an impeccable reputation.

The Dutch customs authorities allow the refund.

The Belgian customs authorities, on the other hand, intend to reject the request for repayment. In not too veiled terms, they indicate that they distrust the importer and suspect him of trying to wrongly obtain the requested refund.

Although several initiatives have been taken in Belgium in recent years to increase mutual understanding between customs authorities and legitimate economic operators, this example shows that these efforts must absolutely be sustained and preferably increased.

Especially when dealing with individual files, Belgian customs officials still too often tend to stick to the old standard that all companies are fraudsters until the contrary is established. That old standard is at odds with today's (business) world and must be thrown overboard as quickly as possible.

The relationship between customs authorities and legitimate economic operators today must be a partnership based on mutual trust. Not a relationship of adversaries.

A strong partnership between customs authorities and legitimate economic operators has only advantages:

• legitimate economic operators will strengthen their efforts towards compliant behavior, and will do so on their own initiative in consultation with customs authorities;
• customs authorities will be able to carry out more targeted checks and more easily identify and sanction companies that do not comply too closely with customs and excise regulations;
• decisions of the customs authorities in individual files will be easier to accept, thus reducing disputes;

and last but not least Belgium will become more attractive as a location for companies. And that's what it should be about.

Written by Jurgen Gevers.