The World Customs Organization (WCO, Organization Mondiale des Dounaes, OMD) is an intergovernmental organization of more than 170 Member States. It is of tremendous importance for the simplification of international trade and customs procedures; however, its modes of action and decision-making...

The World Customs Organization (Organisation Mondiale des Dounaes) is an intergovernmental organization of more than 170 Member States that was founded as European Customs Cooperation Council in 1952. This paper gives a brief overview of its history and legal milestones.

The Nomenclature that is governed by the Convention on the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (Harmonized System Convention, Brussels, 14 June 1983) has resulted in an adjustment of many nomenclatures used worldwide for statistical and customs classifi cation because...

Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are growing more and more important in the global trade in goods and services. Between 1958 and 2005, 141 RTAs concerning the trade in goods were indicated to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Secretariat (since 1995 the World Trade Organization...

Some scientists and authorities are arguing that tariffs are growing more and more unimportant since eight GATT/WTO-Tariff-Rounds have resulted in tremendous reductions of the original tariff rates in the late 1940ies. The Non-Tariff-Measures however are gaining more importance. A...

The Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) status is being introduced around the globe in more and more countries in order to combat terrorism by better security measures in World Trade. This paper gives an overview about existing AEO programmes and new AEO programmes which are about to start in...

More countries and economic regions are applying the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (Harmonized System Convention). Here is an overview for 2014 of the new countries which are using the worldwide uniform language of trade now and will apply the tariff scheme from 2015.

More and more countries and economic regions are applying the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (Harmonized System Convention). This paper examines, in the update 2009, the new countries which are using the worldwide uniform language of trade since 2007 and 2008 and which are...