Inside France’s charm offensive to host Europe’s new customs cops

LILLE, France — France’s plan for winning the race to host a European customs watchdog has become clear: Set the pace for the bidding war.

POLITICO was among 20 officials from all over Europe on a trip to the northern French city on Tuesday for an in-person look at Lille’s bid to host the new European Union Customs Authority.

In what felt like a joyful school trip, visitors toured the agency’s office, where the authority’s future 250 employees would work — a state-of-the-art white building adjacent to the train station and Lille’s Flemish old town. They then took a stroll in the multilingual European school where future officials could send their kids.

Invitees even got a guided tour of the city center and tasted local delicacies during a lunch that one of the attendees described as “the heaviest of my life.”

Though other cities like Warsaw, Málaga and Porto have made their candidacies official, no other potential host has started this early and campaigned so hard to date (bids are due Nov. 27).

France is also likely to benefit from the fact that it has taken a leading role in one of the most pressing issues facing customs authorities today: the flood of cheap goods from China.

French officials this week launched a high-profile fight against Shein, moving to suspend the platform in France following allegations that the Chinese fast-fashion e-commerce giant was selling childlike sex dolls. Authorities also took the extraordinary step of inspecting more than 200,000 parcels from Shein that had arrived at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport. 

Official from allover the EU got a taste of French hospitality as they visited Lille. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO

France led the charge to tax purchases made on platforms like Shein, Temu and AliExpress by proposing a €2 levy on any small parcel worth more than €150 coming from outside the bloc. The EU is considering following suit.

“The advantage of hosting the authority in Lille is also that France is the country that has realized the most the danger coming from Chinese e-commerce platforms,” said Socialist member of the European Parliament François Kalfon as he walked through Lille city center. Hosting the customs authority would create “a favorable ecosystem” to make sure that French activism on customs control turns into a European approach, he said. 

Kalfon added, the fact that France already hosts several other European Union agencies — there are five on French soil, plus the European Parliament in Strasbourg — shouldn’t count against the bid.

Lille has some geographic advantages compared to those other three cities officially in the running. It is just over 100 kilometers from Brussels, and well connected to many major airports and harbors — a key asset for an authority charged with monitoring customs data from all over the bloc to keep out unsafe and illicit products.

Still, Paris is taking no chances after two recent stinging defeats in bids to host the bloc’s anti-money laundering authority and its medicines agency.

France wants to host the future authority in a state-of-the-art new building next to Lille train station. | Giorgio Leali/POLITICO

Laurent Saint-Martin, who recently served as both trade and budget minister for France, along with former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, are leading the bid.

Saint-Martin told POLITICO while walking down the steps of what he hopes will be the future customs authority HQ that the key was to get out of the starting blocks early, reaching out to other countries and MEPs — even if the exact voting procedure hasn’t been settled on yet.

Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Croatia could soon launch their own bids for hosting the customs authority, according to several officials with direct knowledge of their plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. And candidate countries are lobbying to host the it in chats with officials from EU member countries.

But France’s decision to get the jump out of the gate appears to be bearing fruit.

Several non-French officials on the trip, likewise granted anonymity to discuss an ongoing competitive bid without official authorization, said the were impressed by the bid.

“This is the right moment,” one of them said. “The others are still a few steps behind.”