Customs territory

A customs territory is a geographic territory with uniform customs regulations. Existing customs territories consists fall into several types:

There are also some unregulated lands (usually uninhabited) not part of any customs territory.

As of 2010, most customs unions rarely operate as a single entity and are represented in relations with other customs territories either jointly by their member states governments and the union institutions or by only the member states. Thus, in practice, they rarely appear as a single customs territory and instead they operate as a multiple separate customs territories that have the same or similar customs tariff. The European Union (EU) is the only trade bloc in which the union institutions have exclusive competence over the common external tariff and thus sign and ratify agreements with foreign states without direct participation of the EU member states. The EU is also the only trade bloc member of the World Trade Organization, but the EU member states are continuing their own separate memberships, as not all of the WTO issues fall within the scope of exclusive EU competences.

The governing organs (government or other responsible administrative entity for the states and territories, secretariat or similar international organization body for the trade blocs) of the customs territories negotiate and sign trade agreements. In some cases the negotiations are conducted by a trade bloc secretariat, but the actual agreement is signed by the member states of the trade bloc. It is also possible for a group of customs territories, that do not form a customs union (regardless if they cooperate as a different type of trade bloc), to negotiate trade agreements together and to sign the resulting agreement individually (for example, the European Free Trade Association).

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