Peter wrote:
Right. I am gonna file a complaint about, ahem, France. That is a whole country, and quite a big one, last time I looked Chances of getting anywhere are precisely zero. And if you get busted and need some help, a lawyer who can read well enough to even understand this will be €5k a day.
The point of this URL is to report such cases to the commission, which then takes action. You don’t need a lawyer for this.
You guys are giving me a headache 
My wish would be for our fantastic associations such as AOPA et Al, to do something and use their monies to fight and give the same rights to international pilots as any motorist have, easy no?
Or if that doesn’t work, then have countries apply the same rules we are subject to, for ground transportation: let’s introduce restricted and limited points of road passages, let’s introduce the need for a Road Plan, let’s introduce PN or PNR to cross said crossing point, and let’s add some customs fee to spice it up.
Why are we (being civilized here, but really thinking of other adjectives…) discriminated?
The point of this URL is to report such cases to the commission, which then takes action. You don’t need a lawyer for this.
OK, but in reality this is about 100000ft below the Brussels radar, which has far bigger fish to fry on Directive compliance. I am not following their newsletters but there are things like VAT on certain kinds of consumer products e.g. toys, or VAT on food containing more than a certain % of specific ingredients, etc, and these are – especially if cases running for years – multi billion € issues, which those affected are fighting with 10k-20k/day law firms.
That is why we have these situations in GA. Nobody is going to bother.
Why are we (being civilized here, but really thinking of other adjectives…) discriminated?
Yes – this is all BS, 100% to do with job protection and job demarcation, with the good old 1970s union stuff chucked in. Customs in modern mainland Europe, especially inside schengen, is meaningless. Look at those debates about whether you can wear a CHF 20k watch, and is it a non-declare item? The answer is self evidently that it is but mostly you get away with it. One guy posted in Germany, on this very topic IIRC, that you can cross the border with a car, or a cheap bike, but cannot cross it with a 5k-10k e-bike.
Dan wrote:
My wish would be for our fantastic associations such as AOPA et Al, to do something and use their monies to fight and give the same rights to international pilots as any motorist have, easy no?Well, well, I wouldn’t expect so much from AOPA Switzerland.
Customs in modern mainland Europe, especially inside schengen, is meaningless.That is not true. Guess which German customs office generates the most money? It’s the main land-border crossing with Switzerland in Weil am Rhein. Yes, they generate even more income, compared to the seaport in Hamburg or airport in Frankfurt. And even within the EU, rules are not everywhere the same. Think of the Netherlands with their policy on drugs, causing a lot of internal border checks by Belgian and German customs. Or random checks around the borders with Luxembourg, to check on cash money. Or Dutch customs scanning for German-registered cars, driven by Dutch residents, which is forbidden due to high car taxes within the Netherlands. (Btw. I’m also screwed when driving German-registered cars in Switzerland, while being a Swiss resident. And German residents are screwed when they drive Swiss-registered cars within the EU. etc.)
Sorry, I was talking rhetorically, and half tongue in cheek. I suppose my point is that unless you have a “real border” (e.g. Czechoslovakia to W Germany, etc, a mined strip, two fences, patrolled 24/7 and shoot with no questions, etc) anybody can smuggle stuff via a land route.
I would need some training to cross the border via the ridge either side of the Matterhorn (actually that is CH to IT, but you get my drift) 
but elsewhere it should be trivial. Any border which is a) not electrified and b) not mined, you can get through in 1 minute. You won’t smuggle a Merc that way but who does that?
But as you say this is obviously not going to be abolished.
I think the biggest problem for us GA pilots is that when we land somewhere, we are bent over a barrel, because everybody knows we have a credit card, probably a fair bit of money, and the plane is probably worth 6 digits. So it is very easy for anyone to apply any “punishment”, fine, whatever, and we can’t do anything whatsoever. Whereas if you drive CH → DE in a €100 Skoda you got off Ebay, and they impose VAT on the Skoda…
Look at that guy who got busted for import VAT. Once you land, they can jump on you. You can’t just fly back out again. You landed with a 1500kg pile of gold bullion (metaphorically speaking, notwithstanding “gold” being a recurring topic in CH ) and they can just grab a bit of that.
The thing I hate most is vague rules – because any IQ=30 + 9mm person can do what they like with you. Look at this thread as one example!
Peter wrote:
Whereas if you drive CH → DE in a €100 Skoda you got off Ebay, and they impose VAT on the Skoda…Be careful. They might impose VAT from the original (new) price.
The thing I hate most is vague rules – because any IQ=30 + 9mm person can do what they like with you. Look at this thread as one example!Agreed. The worst thing is, they are right until the opposite is proven in front of a court. Normally, every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. But when it comes to customs / financial laws, it works the opposite (Guilty, until proven innocent.) And yes, private pilots and their planes are low-hanging fruit for customs officers.
I will certainly read the declarations you refer to.
But we are talking more than a thousand pages. It would be much simpler if someone could narrow it down.
I have discussed this with many pilots in clubs around here. One in particular, works in the douane and below is the gist of our conversation
I took some notes which I can’t always read so have filled in the gaps from memory. There are some things which I have had to translate for sense rather than accurately.
Q Why does PAF and douanes make it so awkward for private ga pilots coming to visit France yet all other forms of transport can come and go without hassle.
A. It depends what you mean by hassle.
Most of us are aware that if you take a CAT flight to an airport in another country, for arguments sake lets say La Rochelle.
If you fly direct from the UK you will first pass through a PAF checkpoint to show your passport and then through customs. If you have just personal baggage it does not have to be declared you simply pass through the green channel..
If you come on.a flight from Zurich there will be no PAF but there will be customs and again with nothing to declare you will just walk through the green channel. (In fact at La Rochelle I don’t remember there being physical separate channels.
If we fly CAT from Madrid we don’t have to pass through either PAF or Customs. You’ll probably just pass through empty rooms and corridors.
If you fly in to LFBH from Ireland you will pass through passport control and there is an empty customs hall.
During any of these examples and at any time, customs have a right to stop you and ask to search your personal baggage and if you are wearing your €50k Swiss watch they can ask to see receipts.
This is all in the Schengen treaty, EU customs code and the eAIP.
But how does this apply to GA?
In theory it is the same.
However at LFBH there is a gate for GA pilots to come and go and for most of the time they are
unmanned. Yet if you fly in from the UK for instance you might need to get a stamp in your passport both coming and going.
In allocating both personnel and financial resources the Prefect for La Rochelle has decided that it would not to be an efficient allocation of their resources to keep a full time PAF and.douaniers at this gate during all the hours that the aerodrome is open (these are not just the times of ATS presence). In the case of La Rochelle the prefecture decided in consultation with the other interested parties that PN would be needed. And for various scheduling reasons they felt 8hrs was okay for most of the time but there were times when this needed to be longer, hence the 48hr PN NOTAM.
Now here is the area which needs clarification and there also seems to be disagreement within departments. “DO YOU NEED TO WAIT FOR A PAF OFFICER TO TURN UP?” Some argue not in that all passport information needed can be entered into a database of arrivals and departures. Others argue that there needs a presence to physically check when somebody arrives or leaves. I am not PAF so I have no opinion or if I do I’m not saying and things are supposed to be changing, well they should have changed by now. As customs officer we turn up if we expect some discrepancy.
The same applies if you fly in from eg Ireland, not being in Schengen.
From countries which are in Schengen but not in the EU eg Switzerland you still need the PN because, as.customs say, " how do we know someone is coming.;" "Yes, for the most part they have nothing to declare as most will just have personal baggage. But what if we might have suspicions that someone is carrying contraband? How do we meet that plane when we don’t know they are coming? " Yes we can look at flight plans but they would not necessarily give us the time we require to get someone at the airport to do a check. For instance there’s nothing to stop a private plane from turning up at midnight on a Sunday. We don’t have the staff to meet that plane with only a couple of hours notice. Staff have to be rostered and might be away for the weekend and having some sort of call out system for a.couple of aircraft a year, just isn’t feasible."
Q. What about Swiss aircraft, being Schengen landing at any airfield after all we don’t insist that everyone crossing.the border by train or car give the douane prior notice?" " That’s often an accusation made. Switzerland is not in the EU so again how would we be able to check out somebody we think is suspect. We can’t just stop an aircraft, mid air, to look to see if they are carrying something they shouldn’t. We can block off roads for random inspection or put officers on trains or have people at a major station. Mind you the idea of having some sort of rapid reaction forces with helicopters and if we see a fpl for a plane coming from a small airport in Switzerland to Fontenay we could get in our helicopter and be there waiting for them. I’d volunteer to be on call for that especially if the state paid for me to get my helicopter licence.
Ha somehow I don’t think so.
Q.“Well what about the new EU law that allows you to fly to any airfield from France?”
A. "What new law? "
⁰"Well its all over the ga forums and apparently German customs have sent out a letter saying that Swiss pilots can fly to any airfield in Germany without PN to customs except when the airfield requires PN to customs"
A. I haven’t heard of that, if there is such a law it hasn’t been passed down to us yet. And I would be very surprised as without some EU legislation being put in place it would go against the idea of the customs union. As far as we are concerned non EU aircraft must use Union Airports.Only some French airfields are Union Airports.
(from.my research of the customs code and previously posted) there are 72 of them. 2 more can be added on a seasonal basis and few others are able to be used by special arrangement.
He then asked me
“Are you sure its not the reaction to that Swiss guy, you told me about, who German customs fined for not declaring his plane or whatever? I said at the time that they got it wrong if the story was as reported?”
We’ve followed EU law and its been in our AIP for years that aircraft are modes of transport just like a car and should be treated in the same way when crossing borders as long as it is used for non commercial purposes by the pilot preferably from the country of immatriculation. This is for a period of 6 months before one needs a customs declaration. ( I may have memorised this a little wrong I can’t read my notes, but the exact wording is in the eAIP.
Are you sure the German customs change wasn’t more about putting that right.
I agreed I didn’t know and my German wouldn’t stand up to anything more than ordering a beer.
Frans wrote:
You can let “GAC Basel” do the handling of course, and they will automatically send you the customs form upfront, but they are also terribly expensive. 120 CHF handling + 15 CHF per hour (!) parking fee (only first 2 hours free of charge) + 42 CHF landing fee for only 1000 kg MTOW.
Hmmm….. strange, I asked for a quote from GAC for handling, they sent me a quote for <1000kg MTOW 30CHF. I asked for quotes from the airport itself – [email protected] – but as I’ve come to expect from larger airports: zero reaction.
You are asking for someone to narrow it down. Here’s a short discussion of the specific article and issue (deepl translation of a note I made reading the reg):
Since 16 July 2020, Regulation (EU) 2020/877 has been in force, which has amended Article 141 of Regulation (EU) 2015/2446. If there is nothing to declare, the customs declaration on the EU side consists of simply crossing the border. According to Regulation (EU) 2015/2446 Art. 141 letter d), the border crossing in itself is already an “act considered as customs declaration or re-export declaration”.
Frans, some others and I are looking to submit an EU petition on this topic. We’re almost ready to submit it, but we neglected it a bit due to busy work/life schedules. I’ll try to push it a bit more as soon as I can. The goal is to get the EU petition committee to contact all customs authorities and ensure application of this regulation.
@Steve6443 This is what I’ve got from them, for a national flight with a DR40 from/to Switzerland:
For those who can’t read German, a short summary:
Handling on GAC apron: 120 CHF
Parking: First 2 hrs free of charge, thereafter 15 CHF per hour.
Avgas: 2,44 CHF incl. VAT
Landing fee: 42 CHF
ArcticChiller wrote:
Frans, some others and I are looking to submit an EU petition on this topic. We’re almost ready to submit it, but we neglected it a bit due to busy work/life schedules. I’ll try to push it a bit more as soon as I can. The goal is to get the EU petition committee to contact all customs authorities and ensure application of this regulation.Yes, I hope we can make that work. Do not hesitate to catch-up!
