In its first phase, ICS2 will focus on postal and express consignments coming to or through the EU by air, before eventually being applied to all modes of cargo transport.
ICS2 is the new advance cargo risk management platform at the heart of the reform of the EU's Customs Pre-arrival Safety and Security programme. It will gradually replace the existing import control system in three releases between 15 March 2021 and 1 March 2024.
Starting this year with Release 1, the programme will progressively introduce improved supply-chain data collected by customs and new tools and processes in order to enable, for the first time, real-time collaborative risk analysis while goods are still moving through their supply chains to or through the EU.
It involves a complete overhaul of the existing regime from the perspectives of IT, customs risk management and trade operations.
In Release 1, express carriers and designated postal operators established in the EU will begin providing a subset of their Entry Summary Declaration data before goods are loaded on aircraft bound for the EU.
This pre-loading advance cargo information — also known as “PLACI” data — will be analysed by customs with a view to detecting immediate threats to aviation security, delivering a complementary intelligence-driven layer of consignment-level risk analysis in the context of the EU civil aviation security regime.
It will involve close co-operation between customs and national competent authorities for civil aviation security.
Data gathered by ICS2 will also feed into ongoing work on analytics capabilities at EU level, as laid out in the EU's recent Customs Action Plan which can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/general-information-customs/customs-action-plan_en.
