EMCS in practice

How does it work ?

Under EMCS, a movement of excise goods between two traders is documented by means of the successive states of the electronic Administrative Document (e-AD), from issuance by the consignor to acknowledgement of receipt by the consignee.

An e-AD is electronically submitted by the consignor and validated by the Member State of dispatch. In particular, the excise numbers of the consignor and the consignee are matched against a European register of operators (SEED). The e-AD is electronically transmitted to the Member State of destination, which forwards it to the consignee. When the consignee has no connection to EMCS, he is informed by the Member State of destination or the consignor. An e-AD can be cancelled or updated under certain conditions.

Upon reception of the goods, the consignee, or another actor on his behalf, submits a "report of receipt", on which possible anomalies including shortages or excesses are also mentioned.

Several other cases can arise; for instance, the consignee refuses delivery or the consignor splits the movement.

SEED-on-EUROPA : checking the validity of an excise number

A service called SEED-on-EUROPA, allows traders to consult the register of economic operators (System of Exchange of Excise Data or SEED) through the Internet.

SEED-on-EUROPA indicates whether or not a given excise number is valid at the date of consultation; if the answer is yes, the list of categories of goods for which the relevant operator is authorised is also given.

The EMCS Business Prototype

The EMCS Business Prototype (BPR) (latest version: 4.0; please download and unzip) is a tool that illustrates the most important functionalities of EMCS. Although its primary purpose was to assist the validation of the functional specifications of EMCS, it is well-suited to provide a visual demonstration of the way the different actors (consignor, consignee, Member States Administrations) will interact with EMCS. Different "scenarios" can be selected in order to simulate specific situations.

For example, the scenario "Movements between warehouse keepers or registered traders" depicts, by means of animations, the steps of a movement of goods sent under duty suspension by an authorised warehouse keeper to a tax warehouse or to a registered trader. The scenario shows how the e-AAD is created, validated and distributed; upon arrival of the goods, the consignee establishes a report of receipt, which in turn is validated and returned to the interested parties.

Note: the prototype requires the installation of Macromedia Flash 7 (or the Macromedia Flash 7 plug-in). Before using it, it is recommended to read the Prototype User Manual .

Please note that this is a training tool which is not fully in line with the latest version of the Functional Excise System Specification (FESS).