The purpose is to support controls and enforcement, and to simplify and align customs procedures. This in turn reduces administrative burden and costs for European companies.
Administrative assistance with non-EU countries
EU customs administrations provide more customs administrative assistance to non-EU administrations than they request from them. However, the trend goes towards some rebalancing with more requests being sent, and less requests being received.
Technical assistance
The mutual exchange of knowledge and experience between EU and non-EU customs administrations helps to increase the quality of the services provided in countries outside the EU.
Examples of technical assistance to customs administrations in third countries, include deployments, training, capacity building, sniffer dog training, etc.
Most recipients of capacity building activities are other (non-EU) European administrations, as well as North American ones.