In customs matters, as currently happens in other fields of EU law, access to information that is incorporated into official documents held by the customs authorities as well as access to relevant evidence is a major issue for traders, companies, and counsels. In EU customs law, there are formally no discovery proceedings to allow a trader to obtain access to relevant evidence at the pre-litigation stage. However, the EU has put in place a whole set of discovery-like proceedings under the formal umbrella of transparency and access to documents as well as under the ‘loyal cooperation doctrine’ and which often are as effective as real discovery proceedings. In some cases, they work even better than formal discovery proceedings, and in all cases, judicial control is guaranteed. However, because there are many such discovery-like proceedings both at the Member State and at the EU centralized level and considering that they can be combined together, a precondition for their effectiveness is that in-house and external counsels are fully acquainted with them.
Global Trade and Customs Journal