About

We decided to create and publish this directory as a result of our work in developing the ExportersAlmanac. We understood the importance of AEOs in facilitating frictionless cross-border trade, but found the directory made available by the European Union to be too limited.

Although you should use this as a final check that any AEO you are likely to deal with is still authorised, you can only search by: name, country and authorisation type. The details then provided are simply, name, certificate, Competent Customs Authority and effective date. There are no other contacts.

We felt that you should be able to search by “activity” (if you are looking for a freight forwarder, you do not want to be provided with the name of pharmaceutical company) and then be provided with contact details.

In enriching the database we have used:

• Kompass
• The official company registries in each country (where possible) – when used this is indicted in the country summary
• Some desk research

The main problems we have encountered in developing the directory are:

1. Some names listed in the EU directory do not appear in either Kompass or the official company registry for that company.
2. Sometimes the name listed in the EU directory does appear in the Kompass directory and/or the official company registry – but there are multiple entries for the same name.
3. Sometimes Kompass and/or the official company registry have names which could be a match for the name listed in the EU directory and we are not sure which one provides the match.
4. Some companies listed under a particular country are registered in another. We therefore show both the country that certified the company and its country of incorporation.

In these cases we are unable, for the time being, to enrich the data for that EU entry. We will be contacting the relevant authorities to try to resolve these issues.

On a more general point, sometimes Kompass and\or the official company registry only provide partial details. In these cases, we only report what we have been able to find.

We hope you find this directory useful – and that you check out The Authorised Economic Operators Directory – and if you have any suggestions as to how we could improve this service, please drop us a line.

The Authorised Economic Operators Directory is published by The Reference Data Exchange Ltd.