COMMON MARKET AND LAW REVIEW

Book Review :

T. Lyons, EC Customs Law, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, 552
pages. ISBN 978-0-19-921674-1. GBP 125

By:

Jean-Michel Grave

Head of unit at the European Commission, Directorate General ‘Taxation and Customs
Union’, Unit ‘General Legislation and Uniform Application of Community Customs Law’;

Professor ‘Customs and Excise’, Université Libre de Bruxelles.

This second edition of T. Lyons’ book on EC Customs Law is built on the same principles
than those having made the success of the first one in the academic and customs community:
a comprehensive presentation the EC customs union and related legislation in its international
and Community context (Chapters 1 to 4 and Chapter 14 on the ‘future of customs’), rich
developments on basic elements for the application of the common customs tariff and other
international trade-related measures (Chapters 5 to 8), a description of customs formalities
and procedures (Chapters 9 to 11) and substantial considerations on the customs debt
(Chapters 12 and 13). Beyond the presentation of the rules, EC Customs Law provides an in-
depth analysis of the role of the various actors in the production but also in the administration
of customs law (see in particular Chapters 4 and 5) and, last but not least, an amazing amount
of references to relevant and up-to-date case-law.

As indicated by the author in his introduction, this second edition incorporates the latest
developments in Community customs law, up to December 2007. These developments
extend, while briefly, to the amendments introduced in the Community Customs Code and its
Implementing Regulation in 2005-2006 in order to reinforce the security and safety of the
supply chain (pp. 108 and 321) and to the Modernised Customs Code, which has been
adopted in April 2008 and was therefore not available in its final version to the author;
however, he made the best use of the common position of the Council to give brief but
interesting hints on the forthcoming changes (p. 109). Having said that, this edition remains
mainly based on the traditional approach of the role of customs law to support the collection
of customs duties, a role which is more and more challenged by both the continuing reduction
of tariff rates and by the new target attributed to customs authorities and customs procedures:
the protection of security and safety of the Community, its citizens as well as its business
community.

Since the CMLR did not make a review of the first edition, it may be useful for the potential
reader of this second one to know more about its structure and content and also about the pros
and cons of certain choices made by the author.

Chapters 1 to 4 (and also Chapter 6 for international agreements) deal with the context and the
sources of customs law. The choice to start in the introduction to refer to the international
context before progressively moving to the Community context of the customs union and to
customs law is perfectly legitimate. However the choice to split developments on international
agreements between Chapters 1 and 6 might be questioned. One can perfectly assume that
there are differences between multilateral agreements as those binding the Community in the
context of WTO/GATT or the World Customs Organisation, and bilateral or regional free
trade or cooperation agreements of the kind of those referred to in Chapter 6. Nevertheless, a
joint presentation of the whole international framework of Community customs law, also
highlighting differences between types of agreements in particular with regard to their direct
effect, would have been welcome. The location of Chapter 6 between the Chapter on tariff
and the one origin may also seem strange: the introductory sentence of the Chapter, making a
distinction between Chapters 4 and 5 as dealing with autonomous sources of customs law
while Chapter 6 would deal with international relations is not convincing since it makes a
confusion between the nature of the acts and their scope; the author may have considered – as
suggested by the first sentence of Chapter 7 - that the arrangements or agreements at stake
mainly aimed at granting tariff preferences depending on preferential origin of the goodsOne
shall also admit that, due to the dual international and autonomous nature of customs law,
there is definitely no ‘perfect’ structure to present its sources.

Chapter 5 on the Common Customs Tariff is one of the most elaborated of the book. It
presents both the duty rate and the nomenclature components of the tariff from different
angles: the components of the CCT (with the basic distinction between the nomenclature(s)
and the customs duties/tariff measures; the classification rules, their interpretation and
application; and the role of the Commission, the Court of Justice and the customs authorities
of the Member States, in that respect. Section D in particular provides an overview of the
approach of tariff classification by the Court of Justice, based on a fundamental ‘requirement
of objectivity’, which combines an in-depth academic analysis and very useful tools to deal
with practical cases. Maybe the Chapter could have been organised in such a way that the
developments on the interpretation and the implementation/application of classification rules
(in particular through classification measures) and the role of the respective players in that
respect would have followed and not preceded the description of the legal rules themselves
(including the General Rules for the Interpretation, which are integral part of them).

Chapter 7 can be seen as providing more than an overview on origin, considering the variety
and dissemination of the origin rules between a multitude of autonomous or conventional acts
and the frequent changes in the matter, due to both the evolution of the common commercial
policy and on-going reforms. The latest known Court cases pertaining to preferential origin,
mainly in relation to (non) recovery or remission/repayment of duties, are taken into account
(in particular the 2006 Court judgement in the Beemsterboer case C-293/04). Unfortunately,
the author was not in a position, at the time of completion of his manuscript, to assess the
impact on rules of origin (clearly negative in terms of transparency, legal certainty and
coherence) of the removal on 1 January 2008 of the trade part of the Cotonou Agreement with
ACP countries, to be replaced by new Economic Partnership Agreements.

Chapters 9 to 11 on entry and exit formalities and customs procedures, as well as Chapters 12
and 13 on customs debt, reliefs from duty and repayment, remission and appeals, offer a very
good description of these matters. Supported as usual by numerous references to relevant
case-law, they may prove to be helpful not only for economic operators having to comply
with such procedural and financial rules or lawyers is charge of ensuring their defence in
litigation cases but also for customs officials or experts in charge of enforcing them.
However, one can wonder why the Section I on Appeals was including in Chapter 13, since
decisions taken by customs authorities and appeals against such decisions are not restricted to
those pertaining to the recovery of amounts resulting from the customs debt.

It has to be noted that this book is supplemented by six valuable tables of Court cases,
autonomous legislation or international agreements in force, showing the corresponding pages
of the book where they are referred to and developed.
What is now commonly called “the Lyons” has become since its first edition a reference for
practitioners in the field of trade and customs legislation and will without any doubt continue
to be so.