U.S, EU sign container security agreement
The European Union and the United States signed an agreement in Washington Thursday that paves the way for rapidly expanding to more European ports a U.S. program for identifying containers at high risk of tampering by terrorists. The United States will now negotiate directly with the European Commission on how to implement the Container Security Initiative in member European ports, thus ending friction within the EU over bilateral security deals struck between the United States and individual countries outside the EU framework.
Robert Bonner, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that the new arrangement could quickly enable the agency to set up CSI programs in 10 to 12 more European ports. A key component of the agreement creates working groups to establish criteria for admitting additional ports in CSI, he said.
The agreement is significant because it removes bureaucratic and legal barriers to full cooperation between the two largest trading blocs in the world. The agreement formalizes an understanding in principle last November to expand existing mutual assistance in customs matters, including cooperation on container security. The initial agreement had to be approved by the EU Council of Ministers before it could be signed and implemented.
'With this agreement we put our enemies on notice that we will work together to protect our people and commercial commerce,' said U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Eighteen countries have declared their intent to participate in the Container Security Initiative, a program launched by Customs and Border Protection in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The program pushes the U.S. cargo inspection process overseas to get a jump on suspicious leads before a dangerous shipping container enters the United States. U.S. Customs officers stationed in non-U.S. ports use shipping data filed by carriers prior to departure to alert the domestic customs administration about which containers to target for X-ray and radiation scans.
CBP has inspectors at 18 of 38 foreign ports enlisted in CSI to date, including the European ports of Rotterdam in the Netherlands; Le Havre, France; Bremerhaven and Hamburg, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Felixstowe, United Kingdom; and Genoa, Italy.
The new agreement gives the EU equal status in helping set trans-Atlantic policy for securing global maritime trade, U.S. and EU officials said. The agreement does not affect CSI agreements already in place, but gives the EU authority to help develop the standards and criteria for other ports to participate in the program, Bonner said. The pact also applies to the seven eastern European nations that will become members of the EU in May, said Robert Verrue, the EC's director general for customs and taxation.
Together the two sides will share best practices for customs' security controls, coordinate risk management standards for selecting containers for closer inspection, establish common definitions of standards and procedures for collecting and sharing advance shipping data, and work together to improve automated targeting systems and screening technologies, U.S. and EU officials said. The first meeting of customs experts from the United States, EU member states and the European Commission will take place in early May, according to an EU statement.
The goal is to move towards an interoperable supply chain security system that is the same around the world so international traders do not have to adapt import and export procedures to meet different security standards in each country in which they do business, Ridge said.
The EU eventually plans to extend the arrangement it is implementing with the United States to Canada, the first country to exchange customs officers with the United States under CSI, Verrue said. Canada also is establishing rules for filing inbound manifests for ocean, air, truck and rail carriers that parallel rules the U.S. recently put in place for collection of advance manifest data.
The United States would also like to begin harmonizing public-private partnerships in which industry agrees to establish tougher security measures to maintain the integrity of its shipments and government verifies that companies have followed through on their promises, Bonner said. Sweden, for example, has a program that mirrors the goals and objectives of CBP's Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism and both programs should be aligned so they are implemented in a similar fashion, he said.
Interest in coordinating security programs also extends to agencies within the U.S. government. Under instruction from Congress, the U.S. Coast Guard is implementing a program to verify whether governments of other countries are complying with International Maritime Organization requirements to conduct port facility and vessel vulnerability assessments and taking follow-up steps to plug gaps that are found. The Coast Guard announced this week it plans to send teams of experts to non-U.S. ports beginning this summer to help other nations meet the requirements. The maritime service said it is working to make sure its international security program works in tandem with CSI.
Asked how Customs and Border Protection plans to harmonize CSI with the Coast Guard effort, Bonner said that his agency would share security assessments it conducts as a normal prerequisite for each foreign port seeking to participate in CSI. The Coast Guard should be able to avoid duplication and meet the mandate in the Maritime Transportation Security Act by accepting CBP port studies as its own, the commissioner said.
Bonner, who has made container security a top priority since taking the helm at CBP immediately after Sept. 11, ruffled feathers at the European Commission by pushing individual countries of the EU to cooperate with the United States on the CSI program, or else risk having the U.S. close off harbors to vessels sailing from those nations.
EU pushed to amend the existing U.S-EU customs cooperation agreement clarifying that arrangements between the U.S. and individual EU countries be made on a community-wide level instead.
The EC argued that European ports that were not invited by the United States to join CSI, or did not meet criteria for trade volume and security levels, could suffer if CBP subjected cargo from those ports to more time consuming inspections or even denied entry to shipments because they did not come from a trusted CSI port.
'Our concern was that cargo in containers subject to a CSI port was not treated in the same way as cargo from other ports,' thus placing some at a potential competitive disadvantage if shippers diverted cargo to ports that could guarantee clearance, Verrue said.
Having regained central control of security policy vis-'-vis the United States, the EC has dropped legal proceedings against member states that had refused to renounce their CSI deals with Customs and Border Protection, Verrue said. Any country that meets the joint EU-US eligibility requirements is eligible to volunteer for CSI, he said.
The European Commission took the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France to the European Court of Justice in December 2002 for signing individual CSI deals infringing on EU authority, an EU spokeswoman confirmed.
'Now that we have an agreement, we applaud the decision to close and terminate the infringement proceedings against member states. That's an extraordinarily positive development,' Bonner told reporters.