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Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood
Customs administrations cooperate in Georgia 800x

Photo: Georgian Customs Officer explains procedures to EU experts. During the project, experts from EU Member States were introduced to local practices at border crossing points. One of these visits was to the border crossing point on the Georgia-Azerbaijan border. By Pirjo Kotro.

Finnish Customs participated in a two-year Twinning project aimed at supporting the customs administration in Georgia. “For our specialists, the Twinning project provided an opportunity to build their expertise while gaining valuable experience of international cooperation,” says Arto Lillman, Chief Legal Councillor at Finnish Customs, who acted as the Resident Twinning Adviser in Tbilisi.

The objective of the project, which began in March 2018, was to support the accession of Georgia to the Convention on the simplification of formalities in trade in goods and to the Common Transit Convention (CTC). In practice, the project aimed to simplify the goods transit procedure, to facilitate the work of local authorities and economic operators by clarifying the related rules, and to enhance economic integration through harmonised legislation and customs procedures.

Since the common transit procedure requires electronic processing systems, helping Georgia upgrade its information systems was an important part of the project.

Other participating EU Member States were Latvia and Poland, with Czechia and Slovakia also providing support. The main partner in the beneficiary country was the Georgian Revenue Service (GRS). The more specific objectives achieved involved developing legislation, updating IT capabilities, and strengthening the competence of GRS personnel.

The consortium showed significant commitment in its work and was able to achieve the set objectives. Similarly, cooperation with Georgian partners was successful, even if the local decision-making process seemed rather rigid at times.

Twinning is first and foremost about working together to achieve specific goals. The activities bring together colleagues working with the same themes in the EU Member States and in beneficiary countries, thereby promoting networking. Finnish Customs recognises the value of new contacts.

“We remain in touch with our contacts in Georgia. We were also able to establish good contacts with experts from various participating EU Member States. These will certainly be useful in the future, too,” Pirjo Kotro points out.

Twinning encourages participating EU Member State Short Term Experts (STEs) to consider their work from new perspectives. Making presentations and answering questions from colleagues in the beneficiary country often provides more clarity to the experts themselves. Similarly, sharing experiences with experts from other EU Member States is considered fruitful. 

“Having to justify why things are done in a certain way is particularly useful. We tend not to think about things like that in our daily work, but they offer an excellent opportunity to build and reinforce our competence and understanding. This added capital will benefit not only the Short-Term Experts themselves but also their home administration,” Arto Lillman concludes.

 

Project title: Supporting the Accession of Georgia to the Conventions on Transit Area and Launching of the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS)
Project ID: GE16 ENI EC 01 17, 2018-2020