The multi-status authorisation is a measure involving several customs administrations (i.e. customs authorities of different Member States), issued for the placing and/or discharging of the customs procedure, or for allowing storage, processing or subsequent use.

Multi-status authorisation may be granted for special procedures such as customs warehousing, inward processing, temporary importation, outward processing, end-use (Art. 211 EU Reg. 952/2013 and Art. 260 – 261 EU Reg. 2447/2015).

Example: A multi-state authorisation can be used when a company wants to carry out processing operations under inward processing with processing being carried out in Spain, France and Italy.

The application for a multi-state authorisation has to be submitted using the CDS (Customs Decision System), which allows the submission of applications and the granting of authorisations by customs offices in a computerised way.

The application must be submitted to the competent Member State where the applicant’s main accounts are held for customs purposes and where at least part of the activities covered by the authorisation are carried out, such as processing, storage, bonding/collecting (Art. 22 EU Reg. No. 952/2013)

In the event that both conditions provided for by the above mentioned art. 22 are not met, the application must be submitted to the customs authority of the Member State where the applicant’s main accounts are held (art. 12 EU Reg. no. 2446/2015)

For the temporary admission procedure, the application must be submitted to the customs authority of the Member State of first use of the goods placed under the procedure via the CDS system.

For temporary admission the ATA carnet and the CPD carnet may also be used, in such cases the goods and the carnet must be presented to the first customs office of entry into the territory of the Union.