Our View: Customs department desperately trying to twist petrol regulations

The Customs Department has always been notorious for its heavy-handedness in dealing with people. Customs officials always interpret complex bureaucratic rules in any way they please, relying on people’s ignorance of these rules and correctly assuming nobody would challenge their decisions, because nobody can afford the delays this would cause.

This arrogance and reliance on people’s fear was evident in the way the department has dealt with the matter of buying petrol from the north. It decided that this is illegal and officials at crossings have been inspecting the petrol level in random cars at the checkpoints, in order to stop them filling up their cars in the north. So effective was the tactic that some drivers turned their car around and returned home, the department’s spokesman said.

The spokesman also said that offenders would be fined €4 for every litre of petrol bought in the north, as if there was a simple way of calculating the quantity – a half-full tank is a different quantity in every type of car – bought in the north. While customs officers were primarily interested in checking commercial vehicles, they also checked private saloons, a practice that would be intensified, said the spokesman, who said the aim was to “prevent abuse” of the Green Line regulation.

But it turned out that filling up a car with petrol in the north was permitted by the Green Line regulation and a driver could also bring an additional cannister with 10 litres of petrol from the north. The European Commission’s office has had to issue several announcements in the last few days making this clear, exposing the customs department’s attempts to penalise drivers, who were doing nothing illegal.

An announcement, issued by the customs department on Sunday, said: “Exemption from taxation is given to fuel that is contained in petrol tanks of motor vehicles for private use and to a quantity of petrol in a portable container that does not exceed 10 litres,” said the department’s announcement. But it then added that the tax exemption was given on condition that the fuel “does not have a commercial character”, before disingenuously concluding that “fuel is considered not to have a commercial character, on condition that, among other things, it is transferred randomly and not systematically.”

It suffices to say that this was the department’s stilted interpretation of the EU Law that would allow its officials to continue with the legally dubious practice of checking the petrol tanks of private cars at checkpoints. Surely, before demanding to check the petrol quantity in a car, they would need proof that the car was visiting the north “systematically” and the driver filling it up with petrol “systematically”. Without such evidence they would not have the legal authority to check a car. How often would a car have to cross north and fill up with petrol for the driver to be guilty of “systematically” transferring petrol?

The Customs Department will come with an arbitrary number, so its officials at the checkpoint could carry on abusing their power. The government needs to step in and stop the threatened abuses by the department.