News report on the Customs Code

News report

Dana Nurzhan and Alexander Lubitelev in their article on 24 Habar website deliver the information on the new Customs Code, which was ratified on the 30th of December and came into force from the 1st of January. According to the article, the new Customs Code is the product of a large number of recommendations and complaints of the private sector regarding the previous version of the document and is distinct with the inclusion of new digitalized services which will enable the businesses to pass the borders without previous obstacles (Nurzhan & Lubitelev, 2018). Officials claim that the new mechanisms would allow the overcoming of the corruption and inefficiency in customs process.

This new Custom Code is significant since it proposes the unification of the digital world under which the customs sector operate. For instance, the system of ‘Open Window’ allows the management of export/import operations from one access point (Nurzhan & Lubitelev, 2018). The integration of the online system which tracks the mobility of the goods and services is the new level of Eurasian integration. From the neofunctionalist perspective, this move towards greater integration can be explained by the concept of the functional spillover. According to Ian Bache, the modern economies are composed of the highly interconnected sectors. (Bache, George, & Bulmer, 2011, p. 9) The implication of this premise is that the proper functioning of one sector, which underwent certain integration or was exposed to the common market should be supplemented by the integration of other closely related sectors within economy (Bache et al., 2011, p. 9). This is driven by the technical pressure which requires from the Eurasian Economic Union the shared digitalization mechanisms and unified online services for the cooperative purposes of the Customs Unions. From this point onwards, Member States will have to provide the access to their databases on the products/businesses entering their borders and record in the common system. As in the case of the European Union, where the template example is the integration of the coal production was followed by the integration of the entire energy sector, the EAEU undergoes the same spillover pressures.

However, from the perspective of the liberal intergovernmentalism, the further integration of the digital services is explained as the preference of the national government which aims to aggregate the economic interests of the actors within private sector. As Nurzhan and Lubitelev pointed out, the new version of the Customs code incorporated 70% of the requests from the businesses (Nurzhan & Lubitelev, 2018). This indicates that the role of states to balance economic interests – in this case, lowering the transaction costs for businesses while crossing the borders of EAEU Member States and the facilitation of the customs transition process – corresponds to the core conclusions reached by the liberal intergovernmentalists (Bache et al., 2011, p. 12). In particular, states are able to lead the path of the integration and simultaneously account for the economic interests of different groups.

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References

Bache, I., George, S., & Bulmer, S. (2011). Politics in the European Union. OUP Oxford.

Nurzhan, D., & Lubitelev, A. (2018, February 2). Новый Таможенный Кодекс ЕАЭС вступил в силу [The New Custom’s Code of EAEU Came Into Force]. Retrieved February 2, 2018, from http://24.kz/ru/news/economyc/item/213831-novyj-tamozhennyj-kodeks-eaes-vstupil-v-silu