One year on from Vilnius, from paper into practice
One year, to the day, since the Vilnius Manifesto was signed, the community that wrote it returns to Liège, this time joined by the wider customs ecosystem, to take stock of what has moved from paper into practice.
Day 1 is a closed session for Vilnius Manifesto signatories. Day 2, the open congress, welcomes the wider customs ecosystem:
Places are limited and are allocated on a first come, first served basis. Register early to secure yours.
Registration is provisional while the full site is built: submitting this form opens your email client with your details, addressed directly to the congress organisers, Walter van der Meiren (walter.vandermeiren@uliege.be) and Florence (florence@customspliance.eu). No confirmation email is sent automatically yet; you will hear back from the organisers directly.
14 October 2026 · Aula Magnum, University of Liège
One year after the Vilnius Manifesto, the community that wrote it returns to Liège to take the measure of Europe's customs reform, at the precise moment it turns from paper into practice.
In October 2025, more than forty organisations spanning trade associations, academic institutions and customs administrations signed the Vilnius Manifesto, a shared statement of what the Union's customs reform must deliver, built around six pillars: a customs union that is unified, cooperative, simplified, digitised, resilient and professionally competent. The Customs Ecosystem Congress convenes that same community in Liège to take the first structured measure of the reform against those commitments, and to feed its collective judgement directly into the drafting under way in Brussels.
Will implementation produce the ecosystem the Manifesto called for, and where it does not, what has to change?
This is not Liège's first appearance on the customs-reform dossier, and the congress marks a new kind of gathering on it.
Belgium held the presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of 2024, the period in which the customs reform package was steered through its final Council negotiations, with Liège's own customs and trade community closely involved in that work.
In the same period, Liège put itself forward to host the new EU Customs Authority, built its case around the city's logistics and academic strengths, and carried that bid through the EU's site-selection process.
Liège now hosts the community that wrote the Vilnius Manifesto as it returns, one year on, to measure the reform's first year of delivery against the commitments it made.
One output document in two parts: the Liège Declaration, adopted by the signatory community on Day 1, and the Academic & Trade Recommendations Statements produced on Day 2, transmitted within 48 hours to DG TAXUD, the European Parliament's IMCO Committee and the Council Presidency, and published on customsbag.eu.
The Customs Ecosystem Congress marks the first anniversary of the Vilnius Manifesto, signed in October 2025 by business, academia and customs administrations committing to a shared reform agenda.
Reserved to Vilnius Manifesto co-signatories, and to those who have adhered to it since:
Stock-take of the reform's first year against the Manifesto's six pillars, drafting of the Liège Declaration, and closed-door discussion among signatories only.
Open to the wider customs ecosystem, EU institutions, trade associations, companies and academia:
179 implementing empowerments, each read once by academia, once by trade
Trusted-trader status and the import processes that depend on it.
The common EU risk-management framework and its financing.
Data Hub functionalities and access rights across the customs ecosystem.
The EU Customs Authority's own implementing acts, and the special-procedures regime.
Liège governed its own frontiers for the better part of a millennium, a prince-bishopric from the tenth century until the French Revolution, and it is the place where the industrial revolution started in continental Europe, under the auspices of the King of the Netherlands. Since the end of its coal and steel glory in the 20th century, Liège has pivoted to become a hub in the pharma, space, defence and logistics sectors, supported by one of the most dynamic universities of Europe. It boasts today one of the largest freight airports in Europe, connected to the world by air, river, sea and rail, in what is the hinterland of both Antwerp and Rotterdam.
The congress meets within that inheritance. Day 1 takes place in the Salle Prestige of the Selys Van der Valk hotel, the former hôtel de Sélys-Longchamps et des comtes de Méan, a historic palace built in the XVth century, in the glory days of the principality. Day 2 convenes in the Aula Magnum of the University of Liège.
The Faculty of Law is host, not backdrop: its Day 2 academic session is Faculty-led, and the Dean joins the Government of Wallonia in welcoming delegates, putting customs-law scholarship and customs practice on the same stage, in front of the same audience, for the first time.
| From Brussels | 50 min | Thalys / Intercity |
| From Maastricht | 45 min | by road |
| From Amsterdam | ≈ 2 h | rail |
| From Aachen / Köln | ≈ 1 h / 1 h 40 | Meuse-Rhine Euroregion |
The Golden Thelony · Le Tonlieu d'Or · Het Gouden Teloneum
Presented at the close of Day 2, the Teloneum Aureum recognises one individual: the person judged to have contributed most, over the preceding year, to advancing the customs ecosystem. The name was chosen, not inherited, and it carries a history worth telling.
Teloneum, from the Greek telonion, the customs house, is the medieval Latin term for both the customs house and the duty levied there. It is the common ancestor of the French tonlieu, the Dutch tol and the English toll and thelony, one Latin word, native to every language spoken in this room. The citation is delivered in the tongue of the room: Le Tonlieu d'Or in French, Het Gouden Teloneum in Dutch, The Golden Thelony in English.
It also carries a principle. Charlemagne's Capitulary of Thionville (805) distinguished the just toll, levied where trade genuinely receives a service, from the unjust toll, exacted where none is rendered:
It is possibly the earliest European statement of a principle now written into trade-facilitation law: that a border charge must correspond to a service rendered. The award's citation follows the same logic, honouring those who, in the tradition of the just toll, make the border a service rather than an obstacle.
The first recorded toll on the Meuse near Liège, levied at Visé, a reminder that the region's relationship with cross-border trade charges runs back over a thousand years.
Lille's own charter-era toll privileges, granted as the town grew into a hub of the medieval cloth trade, mark an early instance of a city negotiating the terms of its own tonlieu.
Grand Duke Gediminas's 1323 letters inviting merchants and craftsmen to Vilnius, and promising them fair treatment at its gates, give the city its own place in this history, and its name to the Manifesto the congress marks the anniversary of.
One award, one individual: the Teloneum Aureum is not a lifetime-achievement prize, it recognises a single year's contribution, decided afresh each time by the organisers.
The seal is the trophy, and it has its own story. Rather than a plaque or a trophy in the ordinary sense, the Teloneum Aureum is presented as a customs seal, for the inaugural edition, cast with a pine cone, a symbol shared by the French- and Dutch-speaking towns of the old prince-bishopric. In his own 1323 letters, Gediminas complained that Vilnius still lacked bakers, tavern-keepers and enough people trained in the trades that make a customs house work, a reminder that the ecosystem the congress serves has always had to be built by hand, one recruit at a time.
13–14 October 2026
Day 1, closed signatory session
Day 2, open congress
Day 1 (closed): Salle Prestige, Selys Van der Valk hotel, Liège
Day 2 (open): Aula Magnum, University of Liège
Customs Business Academia Group (cBAG)
Université de Liège, Faculty of Law
walter.vandermeiren@uliege.be