French Customs Code

Only customs officers, specially and individually authorised for this purpose, may consult data during an investigation or control. This special and individual authorisation may be verified at any time by a magistrate, either on his or her own initiative or at the request of an interested party. Failure to mention this authorisation on the various procedural documents resulting from the consultation of these data processing operations does not in itself…

1. Customs officers are entitled to bear arms in the performance of their duties. 2. They may use their weapons under the conditions set out in Article L. 435-1 of the Internal Security Code.

Any customs officer who is dismissed from his post or who leaves it shall immediately hand over to his administration his commission of employment, the registers, seals, arms and items of equipment with which he is entrusted for his service and shall render his accounts.

1. Officers of customs brigades must undertake to leave the customs area for five years in the event of their dismissal, unless they return to the domicile they had in the area before joining the customs administration. 2. Dismissed officers who fail to comply with a summons to leave the radius within one month are liable to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of 7,500 euros.

(1) It is forbidden for customs officers to receive, directly or indirectly, any gratuity, reward or gift, subject to the penalties laid down in the Criminal Code for public officials who allow themselves to be bribed. 2. The guilty party who denounces the corruption is absolved of the penalties, fines and confiscations.

Customs officers and all persons whose duties or responsibilities require them to carry out functions in any capacity whatsoever at the central administration or in the external customs services or who are involved in the application of customs legislation are bound by professional secrecy, under the conditions and subject to the penalties laid down in Article 226-13 of the Criminal Code.

I. The customs administration is authorised to communicate the information it holds on foreign trade and financial relations with other ministerial departments and the Banque de France which, through their activity, participate in the public service missions to which the customs administration contributes. The information communicated must be necessary for the performance of these tasks or for better use of public expenditure devoted to the development of foreign trade. II….

As part of the fight against undeclared profit-making activities that undermine public order and public security, officers from the Directorate General of Public Finance, the Directorate General of Customs and Indirect Taxation, and the Directorate General of Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control shall, either spontaneously or at their request, pass on to officers and agents of the criminal investigation department information and documents of a financial, tax or customs…

The services and establishments of the State and other public authorities are required to communicate to the agents of the Directorate General of Customs and Excise all information and documents in their possession which may prove useful in the fight against counterfeiting, with the exception of those which they have collected or exchanged pursuant to Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules…

Officials of the Directorate-General for Customs and Indirect Taxation and officials of the Directorate-General for Enterprise may, on request or spontaneously, disclose to each other all information and documents held or collected in the course of their respective duties, in particular in connection with the control of exports, transfers, brokering and transit of dual-use goods.