As people get richer, they are less bothered about smuggling trivia.
When I was in my 20s, a bunch of us would rent a van and take the ferry to Calais, where the main (some would say the only) object of interest was a supermarket called East Enders (the name of a absolutely bottom grade zero-budget TV series). We filled up the van with beer bottles and drove back. Then somebody (not me) would have to drink 1000 bottles of beer… The allowance was “per person” so you needed say 5 people to be able to fill a van with beer.
I don’t think many people do this today. And in the wider context most travel is by airline, where you are limited by the cost and the sheer hassle of hauling luggage. This travel is actually pretty unpleasant. So the allowances for beer, wine (very heavy), tobacco (who smokes?), etc, are probably never tested. When I get picked up by the police, after every landing from abroad, they find it amusing when I tell them I bought 1 mug, 2 t-shirts and a bottle of Ouzo 
And who is smuggling a €20k Swiss watch? If you buy one in Zermatt you will be paying way over the top for it. I saw my ski jacket (€350 mail order from Germany) in a Zermatt shop for CHF 1699. And if you were doing that, nobody will find it anyway because even in airline travel the arrivals from CH get mixed up in the luggage reclaim hall with arrivals from EU.
Hence I think the main purpose of Customs is protecting the jobs of Customs officials.
I think a lot of people have quietly realised this, since there are no physical customs checks in GA in most places, and the more practical countries (Croatia, the UK…) do the whole immigration+customs job with a police officer(s)).
Peter wrote:
immigration+customs
You simply cannot bunch these two things together. They are very different things. The only similarity is they both sometimes “happens” when crossing a border.
In a way (and a bit indirectly) customs is what pay for all public airports in Norway. At every international airport there is “Tax Free” shops. Selling alcohol mostly, and perfume etc. This is what finances most of the Avinor airports. None of the smaller airports would survive if it haven’t been for money transfer from tax free shops at the large airports.
On one level I think all this is just nonsense. It’s a constructed economy that exists for no apparent reason. On the other hand it is a good way to finance airports, especially the smaller ones. Better keep it IMO, when looking at the alternatives today (new alternatives may pop up, but as it stands today it is a good method that works well for GA).
Peter wrote:
the main purpose of Customs is protecting the jobs of Customs officials
Fully agree… Officialdom must survive, unfortunately not restricted to customs in aviation. ATC would be another example whose definition fits the above.
Dan wrote:
ATC would be another example whose definition fits the above.
ATC is commercialized most places (everywhere?) in Europe. But, ATC is one of those things that would be better off as non-commercial. Not that long ago almost all “bureaus” were owned by the state. Thinking back, I can’t think of a single one of those who has now become commercialized and who offer better service than before, and at a lower cost.
Anyway, I think more than 95% of what the customs offices actually do is all about fighting organized crime, drugs, trafficking and that sort of stuff.
Customs in Germany won’t run out of work very soon. Sure, the smuggled goods shifted a bit to weed on the northwestern border and people on the southern border but when it comes to cigarettes nothing has changed much. Hundreds of vans packed with thrown away but still useful stuff like car parts, furniture, kitchen appliances and even old window frames are driven to Bulgaria, Belarus, Romania etc every day. Why leave them empty on the return trip? Berlin and Brandenburg are famous for their cigarette mafia. You will have that everywhere where there is a large tax on something and just over the border the same thing is much cheaper (obviously). With the EU and mail order prices have evened out in the western and Central European countries but it is still like that:
Peter wrote:
When I was in my 20s, a bunch of us would rent a van and take the ferry to Calais, where the main (some would say the only) object of interest was a supermarket called East Enders (the name of a absolutely bottom grade zero-budget TV series). We filled up the van with beer bottles and drove back.
where once NATO touched the Warsaw Pact. Some years ago I visited Tallinn from Helsinki. Most poeple went straight from the ferry into the supermarket. Only they didn’t have vans because the ferry was a hydrofoil ferry. The scene was like this on the return trip:
Half an hour later they were all under the allowance limit.
Is any of this relevant to GA though? It is hard to exceeding the personal allowances in GA, due to weight or volume.
There have been several cases where migrants where brought into the EU with light airplanes. They weigh around 80kg and take one seat but bring several thousand bucks each. Personal allowance is zero. Also the allowance on cigarettes/tobacco is only 200pcs/250g.
But what do you expect? The amount of GA traffic is negligible compared to road traffic. Of that tiny percentage of traffic only a small amount is travel not training or sightseeing. Of that percentage again almost nothing is international which you need for trafficking by definition. So, no not relevant. That is, not relevant until customs announce that they won’t check GA airplanes anymore. Then it will suddenly become really relevant.
Peter wrote:
Is any of this relevant to GA though? It is hard to exceeding the personal allowances in GA, due to weight or volume.
Every now and then a GA airplane from Germany is stopped packed with drugs (cocaine, heroine etc). But again. this is not due to customs being arbitrarily lucky, but due to lots of work up front.
Peter wrote:
Hence I think the main purpose of Customs is protecting the jobs of Customs officials.
Don’t know about how they do stuff in the UK. In Norway, and I think just about everywhere else I have been (UK included), you have to be extremely unlucky to be stopped by customs and checked. There cannot be that many people working in customs. The thing with airplanes is that they don’t have a default exemption as a means of transport like boats and cars have. The vehicle itself that is. The EU just got this exemption. This means aircraft has to be reported whenever crossing the border. This is of course just stupid, but as long as a standing exemption, explicit for GA, does not exists, this is how things are.
Trafficking is not a Customs matter though. I mean, you aren’t going to declare the two Afghans
Peter wrote:
Trafficking is not a Customs matter though
No, I guess it’s more in the immigration department.
