Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS) The development of the Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS) is a European Union driven initiative being delivered in collaboration with all EU Member States. EMCS will deliver an electronic system to capture, process and report on movements of all excise goods under duty suspension. The current paper AAD will be replaced by an electronic AAD (e-AAD) giving excise businesses the opportunity to deal with their national administrations electronically and securely. EMCS is an ambitious project being developed by each Member State on the basis of commonly agreed specifications and is scheduled to become operational in April 2010. In parallel with delivery of the EU specifications HMRC, like many other national administrations, are also taking the opportunity to consider national requirements. One of the national requirements under consideration by HMRC is to look at the opportunities to include intra UK movements of goods under duty suspension within EMCS.      Business overview The current Customs position on the provision of EMCS is as follows: The European Commission have announced (Aug 08) the start of Phase1 will be postponed 12 months until April 2010. The delay has been caused by the fact that, at present, there is no legislative base for making declarations electronically. The required legislation is due to be implemented by April 2009. Based on this new timetable we have been informed that Customs will provide documentation and the “technical packs” in October 2008 along with a test system and then live running April 2010. e-customs® will use the interim period to develop, and test the new web based module to cater for this system. Customs are investigating the potential for releasing Phase 2 at the same time as Phase 1. If this is not feasible Phase 2 is likely to be released in October 2010. Phase 3 is anticipated to be early 2011. Please visit regularly to check the latest news      Phase 1 This phase will be the electronic write off for movements commenced in other Member States electronically. The process will allow for the download of the e-AAD from another Member State in advance of receipt. Following trade pressure Customs have enhanced this phase to include the ability to reject a shipment, partially reject and report discrepancies in receipts. This is a significant improvement over the original proposal, which did not cater for reporting discrepancies until 18 months after the start of EMCS, and e-customs® would like to feel their lobbying helped bring about the change in policy. Phase 2 This part of the system will cater for the upload of e-AADs for EU and UK outbound movements. This release will not cater for split consignments. Phase 3 This will be an enhancement of the system to cater for splits, and all the other complicated bits missing from phases 1 and 2! Delivery of this and specification of what will be covered is awaited from HMRC.     We will continue to provide regular updates on progress on the project. If you would like to be added to the EMCS contact list and receive the updates, please e-mail the EMCS Project by clicking here