Currently the provisions of the Act on the General Rules of Administrative Proceedings and Services are applicable as underlying rules in most of the procedural matters in respect of administrative customs.
However, since this act is abrogated as of 1 January 2018, necessary procedural provisions must be implemented in the Hungarian Act on Customs. The legislation of customs is already a special area, since a substantial part of it are the provisions of the EU law being directly applicable, while the local rules of the Member States are for the purpose of facilitating the implementation and application of the EU law. The current three-level regulatory system (i.e. the EU regulations, the Hungarian Customs Act and the Act on the General Rules of Administrative Proceedings and Services) will now be a two-level system as a result of this modification.
On the basis of the bill, the extended Customs Act will contain the procedural matters of the administrative customs, in particular the fundamental principles and the general rules of procedures. The modification also defines the detailed rules of the seizure, the confiscation, the protection of proprietary data and customs secrets, the remedies and the types of the sanctions. There has been a change in the rules of the representation and the customs audits as well. The modified Customs Act is effective as of 1 January 2018.
By Eszter Kamocsay-Berta, Partner, KCG Partners Law Firm
