Sustainable Development and Modern Customs: A Review on Customs Conventions of World Customs Organization

Abstract

Members of the World Customs Organization (WCO) do not take up expectedly the customs conventions introduced by the Customs Cooperation Council (CCC). To attract more members, the main question of the study is within which scope, the future customs conventions or amendments thereon should fall. To answer the question, this study investigates the alignment of customs conventions with the goals and pillars of the WCO and the United Nations to discover those goals, ignored by the customs conventions. It investigates the gap between the scope of customs conventions on one hand, and the modern customs and sustainable development, on the other hand. Our findings show that the ignored scopes are: environment, health, and organizational development; and ‘Temporary Admission (Istanbul)’ is the most inclusive and highly-influential WCO convention. Therefore, the CCC is advised to adopt the global customs conventions on these fields, based on the patterning of the ‘Temporary Admission (Istanbul)’. It attracts more members to join the conventions and increases the contribution of the CCC to both the modern customs establishment and sustainable development in the world. Trade law, Environment, EU law, Trade dispute, Arbitration, Dispute settlement, WTO, Export restrictions, Article XX, preferential trade agreement, timber