Kick-off meeting with the Tunisian Customs Administration

The meeting was attended by the delegations of Tunisian Customs (6 delegates), ESCWA (3 delegates), IRU (1 delegate) and the TIR Secretariat (UNECE).

After a brief tour de table, during which Dr. Badr informed that the consultancy contracts should be finalized in the coming 2-3 days, ECE presented a project overview (André) , a proposed project methodology and a technical overview of the eTIR international system (Sébastien). The presentations gave rise to a number of interesting question which allowed to clarify, inter alia, that :

• the guarantee chain (international organisation and national associations) will be responsible for the issuance of eGuarantees and that only at the end of the process they would record the issued guarantees in the eTIR international system where customs can trust the information stored.
• while the standard submission of advance TIR data is done by the Transport Company to customs, alternative submission methods and envisaged in Annex 11 and in the eTIR specifications, such as the use of third party solution or a transmission via the eTIR international system.

Finally, the participants took/agreed on the following decisions/follow up actions:

• Tunisia will inform about the composition of their project team.
• Tunisia will amend the project plan and schedule (Gantt chart) and check the communication plan.
• Tunisia will start analysing the eTIR specifications v.4.3 and send any questions to André by email.
• ESCWA will finalize the consultancy contacts .
• Next meeting will be organized upon request from Tunisia , including a possible technical meeting to allow the experts to address more technical questions. ECE will circulate an agenda a few days ahead of the meeting.