The future of Intrastat
Page updated on October 23, 2025
In order to reduce the burden on PSIs, the EU Commission’s EEA committee and Committee for Foreign Trade Statistics approved the initiation of planning in 2012. Its proposition was that all member states collect EU internal export data but that the internal import data is constructed based on the export data collected by the other countries. The EBS entered into force in 1.1.2021 and the mandatory Intrastat micro data exchange entered into force one year after the basic regulation, that was as of 1.1.2022. The EBS basic regulation (EU 2019/2152) has been published in Official Journal at 17 December 2019.
Finnish Customs' objective in 2019-2024 was that the modernisation of Intrastat would have largely eliminated the need for Intrastat declarations of EU internal imports per company, as export microdata collected by other member states would replace it. However, per companies cannot be exempted from Intrastat import declaration obligations in Finland, because microdata received from other member states does not qualitatively replace Intrastat declarations. In Statistics unit, we are currently examining a fourth method where Intrastat data for EU import from Finnish companies would not be collected at all. We are now assessing the possibility of introducing a new method into production. For the time being, the thresholds for Intrastat declarations in Finland will also be defined annually in such a way that the smallest Finnish companies are exempted from the Intrastat declaration obligation.
Other methods studied in recent years
Customs Statistics unit has examined different statistical methods with the aim of maintaining the current quality of the statistics while reducing the response burden on companies. In the EU project for customs statistics, a new statistical method was developed in 2022-2023, but for only ten percent of companies, microdata received from other member states would have almost directly replaced Intrastat import data on a company-by-company basis. In 2024, another statistical method was developed in customs statistics, which adapted the method used by Denmark. From December 2023 ,the necessary VIES data for this purpose was received from the Finnish Tax Administration faster than before, because VAT seasonal tax data (the Danish method) was not available fast enough in Finland. VIES data is updated by up to tens of percent after the publication of preliminary statistics and the updating varies from month to month. In November 2024, as a result of the second statistical method, the EU import statistics would be too incomplete in the preliminary statistics and the quality changes to the published statistical data were not acceptable (for example, the distribution of commodity code, the distribution of mode of transport). Customs discussed the issue together with Statistics Finland. A third different statistical method was also further investigated, which would allow for a higher threshold limit for Intrastat imports, but this method did not allow for a sufficiently significant reduction of the disclosure burden for companies. Our goal is to reduce the response burden at least a third.
More information about the future of Intrastat:
Statistics Director Olli-Pekka Penttilä, olli-pekka.penttila@tulli.fi