State Customs Service of Ukraine advancing its anti corruption efforts with the WCO A CIP Programme

From 9 to 13 September 2024, the WCO's Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme team and Member experts successfully hosted, in a collaborative effort, a week-long roundtable with various State Customs Service (SCS) departments responsible for Ukraine SCS's anti-corruption strategy at the Ukrainian-Polish border, in Przemyśl.

The meeting built on the discussions that were held with SCS Corruption Prevention team in Brussels in early July and significantly advances the SCS's work to develop trust in Customs under its anti-corruption and National Revenue Strategies.

The week helped strengthen the engagement between the SCS's Corruption Prevention team and key Customs departments by facilitating a shared view of each department's obligations under the SCS's anti-corruption strategy. By bringing in expert counterparts from the Customs administrations of Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Slovakia, the roundtable also enabled SCS participants to leverage expertise and experiences in combatting corruption in Customs and see how these efforts can be practically embedded into the day-to-day work of a Customs organization.

Priorities emerged throughout the week for the continued work of Ukraine under the WCO A-CIP Programme over the next year, enabled through funding from Norway. In particular, WCO tools, instruments and resources that may aid the SCS in its anti-corruption and Customs reforms were identified. These included the WCO's Performance Measurement Mechanism (PMM) and the WCO's Customs Integrity Perception Survey (CIPS). Ukraine has already begun to make use of the WCO's new PMM online platform, and CIPS data collection is currently happening on the ground in Kyiv and various border crossing points in Ukraine's western regions throughout the month of September.

The WCO A-CIP Programme team and Member experts will continue to work with Ukraine to ensure these and other tools are used effectively and in ways that will best enable SCS to meet its anticorruption and Customs reform goals.

The WCO A-CIP Programme, funded by Norway, is a comprehensive initiative that provides technical assistance and capacity-building support to WCO Member administrations implementing integrity-related initiatives in line with the WCO Revised Arusha Declaration. The Programme aims to enhance the integrity and transparency of Customs operations and promote anticorruption efforts. For more information, please contact [email protected].