Ukrainian business is among the first 20 countries out of 36 to use the latest version of the NCTS Phase 5 common transit system (the so-called customs visa-free regime)

Ukrainian business is among the first 20 countries out of 36 countries of  the Convention on a Common Transit Procedure to use the latest version of the NCTS Phase 5 common transit system thanks to the coordinated work of the Ministry of Finance, the State Customs Service and the support of international partners.

As a reminder, NCTS is an IT tool that technically allows businesses to use a single customs declaration with a single guarantee for movements between the 36 countries of the Convention.

The Convention countries started developing and implementing NCTS Phase 5 in March 2021*.

In the same year, 2021, Germany started applying NCTS Phase 5.

In 2023, 13 more countries made the transition: Slovenia, Spain, Luxembourg, Croatia, Switzerland, Denmark, Bulgaria, Latvia, Italy, Ireland, Finland, Estonia, and the Czech Republic.

And in the first half of 2024, Ukraine joined the list of countries using NCTS Phase 5 along with 5 other countries (Norway, Sweden, Serbia, Romania, and Cyprus).

In July of this year, the United Kingdom and Slovakia also joined.

The remaining 15 countries plan to complete the transition to NCTS Phase 5 by the end of 2024: Lithuania, Austria, North Macedonia, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, Portugal, Malta, Greece, Hungary, Andorra, Belgium, and Georgia.

Thus, Ukraine had 1.5 years less time to develop NCTS Phase 5 compared to other Convention countries, and also started this process during the work of the Assessment Mission before joining the Convention family on October 1, 2022.

Despite the full-scale war, Ukrainian authorities, thanks to the steady support of our international partners, in particular the EU Public Finance Management Support Programme for Ukraine (EU4PFM), have ensured that Ukrainian businesses can operate in the latest version of the NCTS since April 22 this year.

Since Ukraine's accession to the “customs visa-free regime”, the dynamics of processing of declarations under the common transit procedure continues to grow: as of today, the State Customs Service has processed more than 100 thousand NCTS declarations, 21 thousand of which were processed within 4 months of using NCTS Phase 5.

* Data from the European Commission's Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) as of 31.07.2024