The system of customs control of imported goods as commercial goods within the framework of foreign economic activity (FEA) has existed in the Russian Federation since the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Its basic principles are taken from the experience of leading European countries. From that time on, any person has the right to carry out foreign economic activity. In the USSR, foreign economic activity was carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Trade; the state had a monopoly in this area.

General provisions

At the moment, we have a single customs territory of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which includes the Russian Federation. As a general rule, the EAEU border coincides with the external border of the countries that make up this union. When importing goods into the customs territory of the EAEU, two stages can be conditionally distinguished:

• the stage of delivery of goods from the place of arrival (border) to the place of customs clearance (the so-called "customs clearance");

• the stage of registration (the so-called "customs clearance").

Please note that these stages are typical for goods imported by road or rail.

Cargoes imported by air and water transport, as a rule, are cleared (“Customs clearance ”) directly at the points of arrival. Parking places in this case are the zones of customs control. The vessel must stay in these places after arrival until the end of clearance, and the unloading of goods is carried out only with the permission of the customs officer. Then the general declaration is submitted to the customs authority for clearance.

For example, Sheremetyevo airport is located in the area of operation of the Sheremetyevo customs. Clearance of goods is carried out at the customs post "Sheremetyevo Airport (cargo)", and "Sheremetyevo Airport". For this, there are several open and closed temporary storage warehouses.

Delivery stage

At this stage, the goods actually cross the customs border of the EAEU and arrive at the checkpoint, where the carrier notifies the customs authority of the arrival of the goods. Then the arriving cargo is placed under the customs transit procedure for delivery to another customs authority within the EAEU at the location of the recipient of the cargo.

Now, to speed up the procedure, preliminary information (PI) about imported goods is used. The meaning of the PI is as follows: the carrier or other interested person, for example, the recipient, knowing about the goods that will be imported into the customs territory of the EAEU, informs the customs authority at the place of arrival about the imported cargo in advance (not earlier than 15 days). At the same time, the PI contains all the information about the cargo, carrier, recipient, which will be declared in the transit declaration.

When the goods actually cross the customs border, it is enough for a customs official to verify the details of the documents provided to identify the information about them declared in the PI. In the absence of discrepancies on the basis of the PI, an electronic copy of the transit declaration is automatically generated and information about the goods is sent through electronic communication channels to the customs authority at the place of delivery.

After arriving at the place of delivery according to the customs procedure of customs transit, the carrier ends up the procedures.

Customs clearance

This is the stage of the so-called "Customs clearance", when a customs declaration is filled in respect of arrived goods, usually in the electronic form of the Declaration for goods in order to place the arrived goods under the customs procedure for release for domestic consumption (IM 40) or any other procedure provided by the current EAEU law.

The customs clearance process has already been described in other articles.