General information

Below you will find general instructions on how to fill out the individual boxes of the electronic application for a decision on binding tariff information (hereinafter: electronic application).

• Binding tariff information (BTI) decisions are issued in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 952/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 October 2013 establishing the Union Customs Code (UCC).

• Decisions on a BTI may only be taken if the goods are to be subject to a customs procedure (Article 33 UCC). A BTI decision is binding for any customs office in the customs territory of the Union (Article 26 UCC). The BTI decision takes effect from the date on which the applicant (or, if applicable, the representative) receives it or is deemed to have received it (Article 22(4) UCC) and does not apply, for example, to past import or export operations. A BTI is valid for a maximum of 3 years (Article 33(3) UCC). An amendment to the Nomenclature, the explanatory notes to the Harmonised System or to the Combined Nomenclature, classification opinions, publications of Commission Regulations concerning the classification of goods or judgements of the Court of Justice of the European Union or national courts may result in a BTI ceasing to be valid or being revoked before the expiry of 3 years.
An application for the reissue of a BTI may be submitted to the Hauptzollamt Hannover [Hanover Main Customs Office], Waterloostraße 5, 30169 Hannover, Germany.

• A BTI may not be used for imports or exports which have already taken place or for customs formalities which have already begun.

• An individual application has to be submitted for each of the goods using the Customs Portal. Once the application has been submitted, you will receive an acknowledgement of receipt with an application number and an application accompanying document. If this has been indicated in the application, samples of the goods subject to examination must be sent in sufficient quantity, together with the application accompanying document, to the Hauptzollamt Hannover [Hanover Main Customs Office], Waterloostr. 5, 30169 Hannover, Germany. If this is not appropriate because of the specific nature of the goods, such as size, weight, perishability, value or similar, it is possible to upload images, data sheets or descriptions, etc. of the goods using the Customs Portal. Permissible file formats are JPEG and PDF.
In order to comply with accessibility requirements, descriptions of uploaded images must be given in the corresponding field provided.
Frozen, refrigerated, fresh products, samples of raw tobacco products and samples of dangerous goods are to be sent for examination only if the given authority specifi-cally requested the applicant to provide them.
If the information provided in the application is not sufficient for a clear classification of the goods and you are not able to provide the necessary data on request, but you still request a BTI decision, it must be assumed that the goods must be officially examined. Any fees incurred in the course of tests conducted in such an examination will be invoiced to you together with a “Notice of Assessment of Costs”. It should also be borne in mind that the goods may be subject to usage, damage or even destruction during the course of testing. This does not give rise to a claim for damages.

• A BTI may only be used by the holder of the decision.

• If an applicant is represented directly, the BTI decision, as well as all subsequent decisions, will only be provided to the representative via his or her Customs Portal inbox. Therefore, in the case of direct representation, an authorisation to represent the applicant, which also includes an authorisation to retrieve data and act as a receiving agent, must be included when submitting the application. This authorises all administrative acts relating to the BTI (i.e. making declarations, filing applications and lodging and withdrawing legal remedies as well as receiving BTIs, other administrative acts and notifications). This authorisation is valid for the BTI until the end of its legal validity (3 years) or as long as no revocation of the authorisation is known.

• Information provided in boxes 1, 2, 4 and 10 of the electronic application is confidential and is subject to institutional data secrecy.

• The BTI is issued free of charge. However, certain costs incurred by the customs authorities for analyses, expert opinions for samples or the return of such samples shall be charged to the applicant.

• Upon request, a translation of the attached documents into the official language(s) of the Member State concerned shall be provided.

• If the application contains inaccurate or incomplete information, the BTI based on such information may be annulled (Article 34(4) UCC).

• The application’s data and the BTI are stored in the EBTI database of the European Commission. Likewise, photographs, illustrations and information concerning the goods, added to the application or prepared by authorities, will be included in this database. If you subsequently become the holder of a BTI, this does not mean that there will be no customs in-spection or indeed taking of samples to check that the goods described in the BTI correspond to the goods declared in the customs declaration.

• Holders of a Binding Tariff Information (BTI) decision are obliged, when placing goods under a customs procedure, to indicate the existence of the BTI in the relevant declaration.

• The European Commission has made access to the EBTI database public via the internet.
The database can be accessed at: https://www.ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/ebti/ebti_home.jsp?Lang=en

This database contains all valid BTIs and any images associated to them, which are not subject to confidentiality. Certain fields are therefore marked (confidential) in the application. The information in those boxes, or images marked “confidential”, are not shown.

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