EU customs assistance ends in Albania

TIRANA, Dec. 8 – The European Union’s Customs and Fiscal Assistance Mission to Albania (EU CAFAO-Albania) will close its doors at the end of December 2007, it reported last weekend.
A final meeting was organized on Friday to celebrate the successes and set future priorities.
Head of the Delegation of the European Commission, Helmut Lohan, in one of his early positions in Brussels as CAFAO Task Manager, thanked past and present staff and experts of the Mission for their hard work and for assisting Albania in reaching higher standards in both Customs and Tax administrations. The European Commission established the Customs Assistance Mission to Albania (CAM-A) in June, 1997 as part of its commitment to supporting Albania during its Stabilization and Association process.
The total amount granted to the Western Balkans region between 1996 and 2005 was 170 million Euros. In March 2006, the Mission was expanded to include the tax administration and is, therefore, now called the EU’s Customs and Fiscal Assistance Mission to Albania (EU CAFAO-Albania).
The Mission is managed by Eurocustoms, a consortium of EU member states customs services, through which customs and tax assistance is provided to all of the countries of the Western Balkans. Under Eurocustoms’ contracts, 34.52 million Euros were received by the countries in the region, with Albania’s budget reaching 5.65 million Euros during these two years.
During this time, the EU CAFAO Mission has assisted, inter alia, in the area of Customs Laboratory, Data Analysis and Data Mining, Customs Procedures, Tax Computerization, Tax Enforcement, Internal Audit Customs and Tax, Human Resource Management, Legal Assistance, Organized Crime Initiatives, Excise, VAT, EU Fiscal Blueprints and the EU Code of Conduct on Business Taxation. EU CAFAO has also assisted Albanian counterparts with various study visits, such as to Spain – a module on survival at sea in the event of abandoning ship, to Estonia in relation to the new unit being set up for the investigation of tax crime, Denmark on the Combined Nomenclature, the UK on Internal Audit for both Customs and Taxation, the UK on A-posteriori, Italy on Customs Procedures and Germany for Training Units of both Customs and Tax Directorates. Although EU CAFAO-Albania is closing in December 2007, the European Commission continues to be committed to supporting Albania during its Stabilization and Association process. Assistance will continue to be granted in the years to follow, with Customs assistance commencing in early 2008. The new program is to be called TACTA. Taxation assistance will start in 2009 and Albania’s maximum contribution from its IPA 2007 budget is expected to be 1.80 million Euros, or 25.3 percent of the total that is being granted to the entire region of the Western Balkans.