Who Benefits Most From AEO Certification? An Austrian Perspective

In this paper, the Taxation and Customs Union Directorate-General (European Commission) (TAXUD) Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) Database was employed and supplemented with company data to develop a census of AEO certifications per company size (in terms of employees and revenue) and export/import quotas in the case of Austria 2008-2013 in order to determine who benefits most from AEO certification. Findings can be simply summarised as follows: the more export-orientated a sector is, the more AEO certifications are granted. More specifically, about 49% of all AEO certifications in Austria are granted to companies from the manufacturing industry, followed by about 29% to transport and logistics service providers and 18% to wholesale or retail companies. Others such as the primary sector, energy provision and service industries are negligible. Looking more closely at the Austrian AEO certified companies, most of them from the manufacturing industry can be classified as ‘SME’ in the European Union (EU) sense but are being heavily export-orientated at the same time and in need of an AEO certificate to smooth their export/import operations. Transport and logistics service providers do benefit from AEO certification, too, but are being pushed to apply for certification by their customers.