On 29 March 2019, the UK will offi­cially leave the EU. Irre­spect­ive of the shape of the future rela­tion­ship between the EU and the UK, a cus­toms bor­der will be cre­ated. Wheth­er the out­come of the nego­ti­ations leads to a Free Trade Agree­ment, a cus­toms uni­on, or wheth­er no deal will be reached, in all scen­ari­os a cus­toms bor­der will exist where this was pre­vi­ously not the case.

Without tak­ing appro­pri­ate meas­ures, busi­nesses trad­ing with the UK will be con­fron­ted with sig­ni­fic­ant delays at the UK and EU cus­toms bor­ders.  In the Neth­er­lands alone, approx­im­ately 77,000 com­pan­ies are trad­ing goods with the UK and over 35,000 of these com­pan­ies nev­er dealt with cus­toms before, and hence have no cus­toms man­age­ment in place. Appro­pri­ate meas­ures should be taken now to pre­vent goods being stopped at the bor­der post-Brexit. Because one thing is clear: Brexit will force busi­nesses trad­ing with the UK to deal with cus­toms form­al­it­ies.

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