On Oct. 30, 2015, General Administration of Customs of China announced the formal implementation of mutual recognition of “authorized economic operators” (hereinafter referred to as “AEO”) with EU from Nov. 1, 2015.
China and EU customs entered into a mutual recognition arrangement on categorized management of enterprises. Under the AEO system framework, the credit status, legal record, safety measures, etc. of enterprises will be evaluated and certified by the customs, and the enterprises that are recognized by China/EU customs as “AEO” enterprises may enjoy various facilitated customs clearance procedures, including: simplified risk assessment procedures such as customs inspection and supervision, recognition of safe trading partnership, prioritized customs clearance, continuous trading guarantee mechanism, etc.
EU “AEO” enterprises can enjoy the aforementioned facilitated customs clearance when importing/exporting goods to China by filing in the AEO authorization code issued by China customs in the customs declaration. After validating the AEO code and the enterprise information with China customs, the facilitation measures would be applied automatically.
China customs has signed the agreement for mutual recognition program with four countries (districts) till now, i.e. Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong and EU.