Carnet Update Europe:
The FIA have completed their legal review of the global carnet guarantee agreement, and are ready to start consulting with their stakeholders & government organisations to implement the changes. The amendments have to be agreed by the associations (issuers) the AIT and the world customs council, only then will the changes be fully implemented. We expect this to be completed before the end of March 2016.
Once these changes have been implemented, any EU Citizen may apply for a carnet from any EU issuing organisation (note this does not mean they will issue one). Discussions with the FIA were positive that other issuers would be willing to issue carnets to UK citizens.
We now fully believe that the clause under discussion/in dispute is not enforceable i.e The requirement of a letter of non-objection in the EU is NOT required.
We believe where an association is preventing or denying EU citizens access to public services they may also be breaking EU laws, we are happy to raise this with the associations on behalf of our members in the hope that we can gain some traction before the changes are fully implemented.
As mentioned in the previous update we are currently speaking with both the UK & Irish governments so that we may be able to issue carnets in the future. If the financials make sense and we can provide carnets to people with a reasonable and comparative level of security we will move forward with this option. We hope that by becoming an issuer, we can ensure that overlanders are never put in this situation again…
Regular/small updates will be posted in our FB Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/OverlandSphere .