EMCS Roadmap

EMCS has become operational during a phase (Phase 2) which started on 1 April 2010. For a detailed description of the different Phases of the EMCS project, go to EMCS Computerisation project. 

Following the planning of EMCS Phase 2 the roll-out is being performed as follows:

• since 1 April 2010 (called Milestone a or Ma): economic operators in "initial Member States" (IMS) have been able to submit electronic Administrative Documents (e-ADs) for excise movements to any other Member State under EMCS. All these documents are discharged electronically by the consignee in the Member State of destination;
• As a consequence, since 1 April 2010,all economic operators in all Member States have to be able to discharge electronically the e-ADs referred to in the previous paragraph (Member States which can only discharge e-ADs electronically but from which e-ADs cannot yet be sent are called "non-initial Member States" (non-IMS);
• since 1 April 2010 until 31 December 2010: all Member States and all economic operators are progressively joining EMCS;
• from 1 January 2011(called Milestone b or Mb): all movements of excise goods under suspension of excise duty must be carried out using EMCS, meaning that the existing paper AAD cannot be used any more after Mb, as it no longer has any legal base.
  
  
  Since 1 March 2011, the initial difficulties in some Member States have been resolved and EMCS now functions correctly in all Member States.
• from 1 January 2012 (called Milestone c or Mc): the range of functionalities that are mainly for use by Member States administrations will be extended (administrative cooperation) and the remaining core business functionalities will be added (e.g. splitting of a movement)

For more details regarding the deployment of EMCS by Member States see document CED 698 rev.12 .

 In the event of a trader's or a Member State's EMCS system being temporarily unavailable procedures described in the Fallback and Recovery Specification will be used. Traders should contact their administrations for details of such arrangements.