{"id":1953,"date":"2026-04-02T16:12:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/1953\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:12:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T16:12:07","slug":"the-inside-story-of-how-france-clinched-the-eus-new-customs-authority-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/1953\/","title":{"rendered":"The inside story of how France clinched the EU\u2019s new customs authority \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The delegation toured the white tower that was to host the authority, visited the Flemish old town, and interrupted lessons at the European school, named after late Commission president Jacques Delors. At the end of the day, several guests acknowledged that being the first to declare was an advantage in itself.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the behind-the-scenes lobbying had started far earlier, with France assuming the role of thought leader on how to cope with the exponential growth in e-commerce packages flooding into the EU from online retailers like China\u2019s Shein and Temu. Paris <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/e-commerce-lombard-veut-une-digue-europeenne-face-a-la-vague-de-petits-colis-chinois\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sounded the alarm<\/a> on unsafe products months before making waves <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/france-eu-parcels-china-flood-fashion-imports-customs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">with a unilateral move<\/a> to impose its own handling fee on inbound parcels.<\/p>\n<p>An official in the European Parliament with direct knowledge of the vote said French officials had tested the waters on Lille\u2019s chances during a visit to Paris\u2019 Charles de Gaulle airport last May. \u201cMost other candidates only really started in January, which was simply too late,\u201d said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely on the day of the vote.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2232684190-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-8217497\"  \/>France&#8217;s Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade, Laurent Saint-Martin, attends the Meeting of French Entrepreneurs in August 2025. | Daniel Pier\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>France also recognized the wish of European lawmakers to play a more influential role in the agency\u2019s seat selection.<\/p>\n<p>Already in November, bid ambassador Laurent Saint-Martin told POLITICO that the Lille team would reach out as soon as possible to MEPs. Warsaw was the only other candidate to actively court MEPs, who under a new twin-track voting system got an equal say in the decision along with EU governments.<\/p>\n<p>Favennec, the project manager of Lille\u2019s bid, hailed the \u201ctremendous lobby work\u201d\u00a0done by Macron, which continued until the day of the vote. Saint-Martin, a former trade minister, toured countries that weren\u2019t fielding candidates <a href=\"https:\/\/mt.diplomatie.gouv.fr\/fr\/laurent-saint-martin-malte-pour-la-candidature-de-lille-pour-accueillir-lautorite-douaniere-de\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">starting in Malta<\/a>. Lille even translated its brochure into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economie.gouv.fr\/euca-lille#telechargements\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">all EU languages<\/a>, including Irish Gaelic and Greek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The delegation toured the white tower that was to host the authority, visited the Flemish old town, and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1996,2026,2027,1612,1165,2028,2029,2030,16,2031,2032,2033,36,5,2034,2035,2036,498,2037,2038,2039,560,561,2040,2041,1997,2042,1998,2043,2044,563],"class_list":{"0":"post-1953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-airports","9":"tag-anna-cavazzini","10":"tag-anti-money-laundering","11":"tag-buildings","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-cities","14":"tag-cooperation","15":"tag-courts","16":"tag-croatia","17":"tag-customs","18":"tag-cyprus","19":"tag-e-commerce","20":"tag-emmanuel-macron","21":"tag-france","22":"tag-giorgia-meloni","23":"tag-giorgio-leali","24":"tag-growth","25":"tag-history","26":"tag-jacques-delors","27":"tag-laurent-saint-martin","28":"tag-lobbying","29":"tag-logistics","30":"tag-macron","31":"tag-malta","32":"tag-medicines","33":"tag-meps","34":"tag-missions","35":"tag-parliament","36":"tag-pascal-lamy","37":"tag-platforms","38":"tag-trade"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}