The original ACC3 deadline was 1 July 2014, which saw nearly 1,100 independent validations conducted with about 120 IATA members holding designations for their various stations. The remaining 120 or so IATA members are either not flying cargo to Europe or they’re flying cargo from socalled ‘green-list’ countries who have no ACC3 requirement.

For carriers unable to complete the validation process of third country supply chains and facilities in time for the 1 July 2014 deadline, a six-month extension was possible from the carriers’ member state of reference, as was the case in these 200 temporary declarations. Speaking to cargo media in Geneva in early December, Gordon Wright senior manager, cargo customs and facilitation at IATA said: The biggest challenge now is that 200 of the destinations that we have today exist with the temporary six-month extension that will run out on 1 January.”

In his response to Payload Asia queries on the expiration, Mike Woodall, project leader cargo security independent validation & international regulatory engagement at IATA explained that the number ‘200’ relates to, “location specific/ carrier specific ACC3 designations, thus the number ‘200’ does not represent 200 carriers, or 200 locations, but a myriad of potential combinations of the two.”

“IATA are currently engaging with the EU Commission, who hold the consolidated ACC3 designation list, to ascertain the exact up-to-date status of all ACC3-affected carriers based upon the status reports the Commission receives and collates from 31 EU/EEA States,” Woodall said.

“IATA’s understanding is that todate no carriers have been directly and negatively impacted by the 1 January ‘deadline’ – but it must be noted that the deadline can, as detailed within regulation, be further extended in certain circumstances.”

As the extended ‘deadline’ of 1 January 2015 could only be granted for “objective reasons” (reasons beyond the carriers control) Woodall said it is possible that EU States have further extended temporary ACC3 designations where they believe the necessary regulatory requirements have been met. Further extensions can be granted up to a maximum of five years, or until July 2017, if the regulator agrees to a roadmap with the carrier. This would involve setting the number of validations to be completed each year, with a minimum of five per cent each year with stations in ‘red-list’ countries would need to be validated first.

And while IATA is “unaware of any negative impacts” from the expiry of the temporary ACC3 accreditations, Woodall noted that even if a carrier failed to meet their obligations, “most EU/EEA Stares would adopt a graduated approach to non-compliance that would typically start with robust discussions concerning rectification action plans that included activity and milestone agreements.”

Speaking in December, Wright said that overall, ACC3 was a quite difficult piece of legislation to put in place for a variety of reasons. A tight timeframe of 20 months to complete the validations was confounded further by the fact there were no trained independent validators in existence when the regulation was conceived. To address that that gaping hole, IATA created a Center of Excellence for Independent Validators (CEIV), which trained and certified 108 independent validators. The CEIV also undertook extensive awareness campaigns for its members and also offered other tools, for example a pre-validation validation. It also offered three- and five-day training courses for the airlines along with other resources.

There were also big questions within the regulation that were unanswered. “So from the time they regulations entered into force there’s been multiple additional regulations that had to be put in place in the European Union to make it a workable solution,” Wright said.

And there were challenges in some countries which were not supportive of the independent validators coming into review their airport cargo facilities’ security systems and processes. One of the more complex cases involved Russia, which was and still is, involved in intense political wrangling with the EU. “Validation in Russia has been quite a task and discussions are still ongoing,” said Wright. Other areas which have proved difficult are Africa and Latin America, he noted. “Outreach there has been more difficult and most of those 200 temporary declarations are probably from there, Wright added.

The other major concern of IATA is that other countries might copy the EU’s ACC3 rules, meaning the carriers will have to jump through the same hoops again, incurring extra costs as they do – “this is something we are concerned about,” said Wright. He added that ongoing work through next year is aimed at trying to ‘mutualise’ the ACC3 accreditations into the security programmes of other countries, such as the US.

“The following year we will see the growth of the ACC3 programme into other entities in the supply chain,” he said. “For example if you’ve got a regulated agent in a third country that is undertaking the security requirements on behalf of the airline, they will need to have a regulated agent three (RA3) status and meet similar requirements to ACC3 in order to continue that in the future.”

What is ACC3?

The ACC3 (Air Cargo or Mail Carrier operating into the Union from a Third Country Airport) regulation was created in response to the October 2010 ‘printer cartridge bomb’ incident which highlighted the risk of explosive devices being introduced into ‘secure’ supply chains. In August 2011, new EU regulations were adopted for the security of incoming air cargo and mail which required independent validation of air cargo facilities and supply chains in all non-EU countries except ‘green-list’ countries which have been deemed to be low-risk and already have satisfactory security measures in place.

The onus is on carriers to ensure their supply chains and facilities they use, meet, or in the case of high-risk, or ‘red list’ countries, exceed the requirements of Annex 17 of the Chicago Convention with enhanced security. The ‘white list’ countries which fall in between are those that must meet security up to Annex 17 levels.