On 16 January 2026, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in ECLI:NL:HR:2026:55 on how customs may challenge a declared customs value.
The case
On 24 April 2012, a Dutch company declared steel and iron fasteners bought from an Indonesian supplier, with a certificate of origin and a preferential rate of 0%. OLAF later found that the supplier made no fasteners in Indonesia and had shipped them from China. Dutch Customs claimed duty at 3.7% and anti-dumping duty.
The company had bought on delivered duty paid terms. It argued that the duties were therefore part of the price and should be left out of the customs value. Customs rejected this. During the court case, customs also ran the procedure of Article 140 of the Implementing Regulation to the Union Customs Code.
The ruling
Customs has two separate routes:
- General powers. Customs can check and investigate. If it shows that the declared value is wrong, it can correct it.
- The procedure on grounded doubts. Customs need not prove that the value is wrong. It is enough that it has grounded doubts, has told the importer why, and the importer cannot remove them. This puts customs in a stronger position and pushes the importer to supply information.
The court of appeal should not have limited customs to the second route. But the second route has a time limit. Once a court case about a demand for payment has begun, customs cannot use the result of a procedure run only at that stage. It would force the other party to help build the evidence against itself. In the objection phase, this is different.
The case returns to the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam, without the material obtained through that procedure.
What to check
- If customs starts this procedure during litigation, object to the use of what it produces.
- Respond fully if it starts earlier. The procedure is built so that silence works against you.
- Do not assume that a delivered duty paid clause lowers your customs value. The Court of Appeal must still assess whether those terms were really agreed.
mr. J. el Khalfioui LL.M.