IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/espost/173968.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The World Customs Organization - A History of 65 Years of Growth and its Legal Milestones

Author

Listed:
  • Weerth, Carsten

Abstract

The World Customs Organization (WCO, Organization Mondiale des Dounaes, OMD) is an intergovernmental organisation that was founded as European Customs Co-Operation Council in 1952 in Brussels/Belgium. It governs all Customs co-operation matters from tariff nomenclature, over universal Customs procedures, capacity building and integrity to trade facilitation. The WCO-Membership has risen in different velocities up to an overall membership of 182 contracting parties in 2017. This paper gives an overview of its history and legal milestones in an update of 70 years of history of Customs co-operation and 65 years of the Customs Co-Operation Council in Europe and the World. It investigates the WCO history by help of WCO publications on its history, the accessions over 65 years and its list of legally binding instruments. The membership rise is investigated by help of a five year spaced membership accession overview. The ten most successful legally binding instruments are identified and ranked according to the amount of membership: the three most successful instruments are identified as the Harmonized System Convention, the Revised Kyoto Convention and the Istanbul Convention. In an annual overview the important historic developments of the WCO over the last 65 years are presented. The paper concludes that the membership has reached a mature phase and that the rise of membership in the legal instruments is still strong. A current development is that newly emerging states are also quickly receiving membership status (South Sudan, Palestine, Kosovo, all of which are not WTO Members). In contrast to the WTO membership (which has risen to 164 contracting parties) some states and economic territories which have previously had an independent status may have a different WCO membership status (Liechtenstein: WTO + / WCO -, Taiwan/Chinese Taipei: WTO + / WCO -, Hong Kong & Macao: WTO + / WCO +, Saint Kitts and Nevis: WTO + / WCO -, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: WTO + / WCO -, Solomon Islands: WTO + / WCO -, Suriname: WTO + / WCO -).

Suggested Citation

  • Weerth, Carsten, 2017. "The World Customs Organization - A History of 65 Years of Growth and its Legal Milestones," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 7(2), pages 17-24.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:173968
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/173968/1/Weerth_CSJ_2_2017_WCO_65_years_Growth_Milestones.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Weerth, Carsten, 2020. "World Customs Organization’s Role During the COVID-19-Pandemic: Declarations, Information Distribution, Guidance and Leadership," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 27(4), pages 44-56.
    2. Weerth, Carsten, 2020. "International Response to Covid-19: Initiatives and Declarations by the UN, WHO, WCO, WTO and other Stakeholders on World Trade, Customs Law and Solidarity in a Human Emergency," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 0(III (July), pages 12-24.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    WTO; GATT; WCO; Economic History; Customs Law; Economic Integration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F53 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Agreements and Observance; International Organizations
    • K33 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - International Law
    • K34 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Tax Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:173968. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.