Goods exiting the EU

Goods exiting the EU customs territory must be presented at the place of exit in the same condition they were in when the export declaration was accepted. In road traffic transport, the export accompanying document or fallback procedure document must be presented in addition to presenting the goods. Goods exiting Finland by sea, air or rail are presented with an electronic Arrival at Exit notification. In addition to this notification, the transport operator must also submit a Presentation Notification at Exit and an Exit Notification. 

Read more about presenting goods upon exit:

Export goods must exit the Union customs territory within 150 days after the goods have been released for export. Customs invalidates the export declaration, if the customs office at the place of exit does not confirm the exit within the specified time limit or if the exporter does not provide alternative proof to Customs.

Place of exit

The place of exit is the last customs office through which the goods physically exit the customs territory of the Union. The place of exit for goods exiting by sea is the customs office in the area where the goods are loaded into a vessel not operating within regular shipping service, provided that the vessel operates outside Finland’s territorial waters.

Other than regular shipping traffic means that the vessel operates between different locations in the customs territory using a route which has not been granted an authorisation for regular shipping traffic as referred to in customs legislation.

Points to consider

If goods exit by rail, post, air or sea outside the EU with a single transport contract the place of exit is the place where the carrier takes over the goods and undertakes to transport them from the customs territory of the Union. Confirmation of exit is requested by entering the additional statement code FIXBS in the export declaration.

The transport must fulfil the following conditions:

  1. The transport contract has been drafted with a railway company, a postal company, airline or shipping company.
    • A copy of the contract must be presented to Customs upon request, if the contract has not, for example been mentioned in the consignment note.

  2. The transport contract has been concluded with only one transport operator for goods destined for a third country.
    • The monitoring of the goods must be possible all the way until they have exited the customs territory permanently, since the customs office of exit supervises that the goods physically leave the EU territory.

    • Subcontractors can be used along the transport route, but the company responsible to the customs authorities remains the same during the transport.

  3. The goods must leave the EU by air, sea, post or rail transport.
    • The rule regarding one transport contract does not apply to ships and aircraft in international traffic

The export declaration for goods that exit by air must include the following information:

  • the consignment note code, number and date  
    • either Airway Bill (AWB), code N740

    • or master airway bill (MAWB), code N741 and house airway bill (HAWB), code 1743

  • code of the office of exit FI015300 Helsinki-Vantaa airport or the code of another customs office supervising the airport, when goods leave from some other airport than Helsinki-Vantaa. 

If the goods are transported as air freight e.g. from Helsinki by road to Frankfurt and from there by air to the USA, the place of exit of the export goods can be Helsinki, if all the conditions of the transport are met. Correspondingly, if the goods are first transported from Tampere by rail to Turku, from there by sea to Rotterdam, from there by road to Antwerp and finally from there by sea to Morocco, the place of exit of the goods will be Tampere. A single transport contract also brings forward the place of exit to the place of departure when more than one mode of transport is used. On the other hand, transports by air or sea to Germany and from there by road over the customs border do not meet this condition, instead the place of exit of the export goods is at the external border of the EU.


Goods exiting Finland by sea, air or rail are presented with an electronic Arrival at Exit Notification.

To provide Arrival at Exit notifications you must be authorised. The authorisation can be applied for by an operator directly or indirectly partaking in actions related to the trade of export goods. The authorisation is business ID specific and the applicant must be a registered export customer of Customs. The Arrival at Exit Notification is used to gain permission from Customs to load goods into a transport vehicle.    

The exporter or a representative can also provide an additional code (FIXEP), in the export declaration and present the goods, and at the same time ask for loading permission without a separate Arrival at Exit Notification. In this case, the export goods must be present at the place of exit, when the export declaration is submitted.


An Exit Manifest Presentation is used when goods exit Finland by sea, air and rail and it can be submitted as soon as the declaration reference numbers (MRN) of the goods to be loaded onto the means of transport are available.

Read more on the Exit manifest presentation.

 


The exit notification is used for confirming the exit in cases where an Exit Manifest Presentation, has been submitted. It can be submitted, at the earliest, once Customs has accepted the Exit Manifest Presentation and the means of transport has departed. The notification must be submitted no later than on the first working day following the departure of the means of transport.

Read more on the Exit notification.

 


If a transit declaration containing export, re-exportation and safety and security data has not been submitted for goods exiting the EU, the transport operator must submit a separate electronic exit summary declaration for them before they exit the EU.

Read more on the Exit summary declaration:


If the goods have not exited the EU customs territory within 90 days after they have been released for export, Customs requests an account from the declarant where alternative proof of the release of the goods is presented. The declarant can also present the proof on their own initiative to the customs authorities of the export country.

Acceptable proof

  • document proving that the import has been cleared through customs in the country of destination
  • certificate signed by a custom authority in an EU country, proving that the goods have exited 
  • transport document signed by the transport operator or other proof, which states that the goods have been transported by them out of the EU customs territory.

Accepting alternative proof requires that the goods have been specified clearly in the document, so that they easily and reliably can be identified as being the same goods as in the export declaration.

In re-exportation from a customs warehouse, one must be able to match the alternative proof to the information in the warehouse accounts and in the decision on release of the procedure.

The alternative proof must be signed and the signature must be clarified. Copies of the documents are also accepted.

If more than 150 days have passed since the day of export, without the release being confirmed, the declaration is invalidated.

Exports by an unidentified declarant

If the declaration has been submitted by an unidentified declarant, the Customs office of exit supervises the release and sends the declarant a written request for additional information, if needed.