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White Paper Pandemic Crisis Trade-Related Response (ECE/TRADE/456)

Published:
ECE/TRADE/456E WhitePaper Pandemic crisis - Publication thumbnail

Introduction
In the future, the year 2020 will be remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic and its related consequences. This may lead to a new normal way of working; but in the meantime, such pandemics could lead to major disruptions in trade flows and damage the overall economic health of countries. There are measures which can be put into place to reduce this impact and allow trade to continue.
Scope of this paper
This paper aims to provide clear, accessible, and concise best practice guidelines to enable efficient control, clearance, and release facilitation measures, and outlines standard operating measures for pandemic situations. The objective is to provide a vision of what best practice looks like and does not aim to be a list of legal obligations.
This paper concentrates on the trade-related aspects of pandemic situations from both the public and private sectors’ point of view. The findings of this paper can also apply to epidemics, which are confined to a country, territory, or region.