EU customs clearance
Tailored solutions for customs clearance into the EU

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Shipping business consignments to the EU can prove both costly and time-consuming for Swiss exporters. Swiss Post offers tailored solutions for customs clearance.

Here’s how it works

Our expertise in EU customs clearance allows us to export your consignments as quickly as possible and with minimum administrative effort – via either Germany or France. This not only reduces the administrative workload, but also saves plenty of money and time.

With our French partner S.A.T., you have an EU customs clearance specialist providing a comprehensive service. It effectively prevents Swiss SMEs without their own subsidiary in the EU from suffering a loss of competitiveness when shipping to Europe.

As your consignments are already cleared when forwarded to the individual EU member countries, the delivery times may be shorter than for a bilateral export. In the process, you benefit from our extensive expertise in customs clearance at the external EU border.

Your advantages

  • No disadvantages compared with EU suppliers due to customs clearance directly in the EU country of entry
  • Liquidity advantages due to delayed VAT invoicing
  • Shorter delivery times thanks to intra-European delivery

Cost advantages

As the VAT customs duty is paid directly by the end recipient in the destination country, you and your importer stand to benefit from liquidity and interest advantages. You also save on costs if the goods are imported via Germany with an intra-community delivery. This is because the clearance fees for other destination countries do not apply. If your company already has a German tax registration, you can even combine the interest advantages and fee reductions with an EU customs clearance via France.

Preconditions

  • EU-cleared consignments must not only display the Incoterm label on the commercial invoice, but also display the special “EU customs cleared” label on the consignment itself. Both are available free of charge from Swiss Post GLS.
  • With the EU customs clearance, a delivery to all EU member states is possible, however not in the country in which the customs clearance is carried out (country of the importer or fiscal representation).
  • If there are different importers, separate EU customs clearance is required for each importer.
  • Transport costs and customs duties for consignment items that comes from a third country (e.g. Asia) must be borne by the sender.