The principle has been affirmed by the EU Court of Justice, in the decision of the Sixth Section of 7 April 2011 (Case C-153/10, Staatssecretaris van Financiën/Sony Supply Chain Solutions (Europe) BV), which establishes at point n. 31 that the provision referred to in art. 5, par. 4, second indent of the Community Customs Code (EEC Reg. 2913/1992, hereinafter "CCC"),
providing that "the person who fails to state that he is acting in the name of or on behalf of another person or who states that he is acting in the name of or on behalf of another person without being empowered to do so is to be deemed to be acting in his own name and on his own behalf", implies that the power of (direct) representation must be conferred always in an express form and never in an assumptive way. The implications for customs representatives are important. To act as direct representatives of their clients, they must dispose, before each customs operation or groups of customs operations to be carried out within a certain period (e.g. during the year), of a written power of attorney (i.e. an unilateral act authorizing the representative to act in the name of the represented person). Without such power of attorney, those who submit a customs declaration in the mode of the direct representation, can be considered by customs authorities as acting as "indirect representatives", with the relevant responsibility  in terms of joint responsibility for the customs obligation set forth in art. 201, par. 3, CCC).

(continues ... in Italian)

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Currently, the measurement and evaluation of performances is a practice adopted in whatever kind of organization, Customs and other public bodies included. Such tools, commonly known as “performance measurement systems” (or "PMS"), allow the optimisation of the organization's management process, properly adressing its decision making procedures, through the intelligent use of the amount of information and data available or aquired during the execution of its activity. For further information, see a recent WCO's research paper on this topic.

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