Trade Compliance, managed and evidenced.
Sanctions, export controls and customs audits all carry real penalties when they go wrong. Gaston Schul runs your trade compliance: the screening, the licences, the audits and the disclosures, across Europe.
TRADE COMPLIANCE
What trade compliance is, and who does the work.
Trade compliance is keeping your customs and trade activity inside the law: classifying and valuing goods correctly, screening who and what you trade, and holding the records to prove it. You can buy screening software and run it yourself, or we do the work for you, the screening, the licences, the audits and the disclosures.
OUR SERVICES
Compliance, run for you.
One independent partner to screen, check, audit and document your customs and trade compliance, under one operating model across Europe.
Your counterparties and transactions are screened against the sanctions and denied-party lists, so you do not ship to a restricted party or breach an embargo. We run the screening; you are not buying and operating a tool.
Your dual-use and controlled goods are assessed, the export-control position confirmed, and the licences applied for, so nothing leaves that should not.
Your declarations, valuation, classification and records are reviewed the way customs would review them, so the gaps are found and closed before an audit, not during one.
The procedures, controls and responsibilities that keep you compliant day to day are designed and put in place, so compliance is a system, not something you assemble before each audit.
Where something is wrong, we prepare the voluntary disclosure or post-entry correction and put it to customs, which usually costs far less than waiting to be found.
Your customs documentation, procedures and broker arrangements are reviewed for the gaps that turn into audit findings.
Where you disagree with a customs decision, we handle the objection, the ruling request and the appeal on your behalf.
A retained adviser for the questions that come up between audits, so you are not facing a new rule or a difficult shipment alone.
WHY IT MATTERS
Compliance is cheaper than the alternative.
Customs compliance only feels optional until something goes wrong. Then it is back-duty, penalties and a reputational problem, all at once.
- Penalties are the least of it. A breach can mean back-duty for years, fines, seized goods, and a withdrawn authorisation or AEO. In our experience the cost of fixing a problem after an audit is many times the cost of preventing it.
- Screening is not a one-off. Sanctions and denied-party lists change constantly. A counterparty that was clear last quarter may not be today, which is why screening has to run continuously, not once at onboarding.
- A voluntary disclosure beats being found. Coming to customs first, with the error and the fix, is treated very differently from being caught. The window to do that closes the moment an audit opens.
- The records are the defence. In an audit, what protects you is not being right, it is being able to show you were right. Compliance that is not documented barely counts.
By offering a clear point of contact and simplifying the reporting process, Gaston Schul not only reduced the administrative burden but also strengthened our overall customs compliance.
RELATED SERVICES
Where compliance connects.
Authorisations & Licensing
AEO is a compliance credential as much as a customs one. The status and authorisations that prove your standards and reduce your guarantees.
Tariff Classification
Misclassification is the most common audit finding. Get your codes right and one of the biggest compliance risks is closed.
Duty Optimisation
Lower your duty without raising your risk. Every saving built to stand up in an audit.
Trade Agreements & Origin
Origin claims are a compliance exposure of their own. Prove preference properly, so a preferential rate is not a future liability.
VAT & Fiscal Representation
Keep your VAT reporting and fiscal obligations as clean as your customs ones, under one partner.
Customs Technology
The records, data and reporting that make compliance provable on demand, in one place.
RESOURCES
Guides & Downloads
Downloadable guides, checklists, insights and tools delivered straight to your mailbox.
Download your Sanctions and Export Controls guide
RELATED NEWS
Customs & Trade. Controlled.
Gaston Schul does more than keep you compliant. We connect it all and run it as one. That is what one full-service operating model gives you, across all your customs and trade in Europe: the clarity to see your exposure, the control to close it, and the confidence that an audit holds no surprises.
GET IN TOUCH
From compliance questions to clear answers.
Tell us what you trade and where, and an advisor will tell you where you are exposed and how we would close it. No obligation, just a clear answer from someone who knows customs.
Trade Compliance FAQs
Trade compliance: frequently asked questions
Trade compliance is keeping your customs and trade activity within the law: correct classification and valuation, screening the parties you deal with and the goods you ship, holding the supporting records, and correcting errors before customs finds them. Gaston Schul runs that work for you, rather than handing you a policy to apply yourself.
If you import or export at any scale, yes. Customs authorities expect you to have controls in place, not just good intentions, and an AEO holder is required to. A programme is what turns compliance from a person remembering things into a system that holds when that person is on holiday or the audit lands unannounced.
Sanctions screening checks your counterparties and transactions against government sanctions lists, such as the EU consolidated list and OFAC. Denied-party screening is broader: it covers those lists plus export-control denied and debarred parties and other restricted entities. In practice you need both, run together and run continuously, which is what we do for you.
Yes, and that is the point. Rather than buying screening software and operating it yourself, we screen your counterparties and transactions, assess your dual-use and controlled goods, and apply for the licences, as a managed service. You get the outcome without running the tool.
Usually, yes, and quickly. A voluntary disclosure, made before an audit, with the error quantified and corrected, is treated very differently from the same error found by customs, and it usually costs far less. We prepare and file it for you, and advise where disclosure is and is not the right call.
By finding the problems before customs does. Most penalties come from a handful of recurring issues: a wrong commodity code, an unsupported customs value, a missed licence, or a counterparty that should have been screened. We review for those, fix them, and keep the records that show you are in control.
Yes. Our own teams cover 14 European markets, with an alliance network reaching further, all under one operating model, so your screening, audits and controls follow one standard across Europe. If staying ahead of regulatory change is the bigger concern, that is our Stay ahead of regulation solution.
We run it. Software gives you a tool to operate and a law firm gives you an opinion to act on; we do the screening, the licence applications, the audits and the disclosures ourselves. And we are independent, privately owned, with no parent company over us and no outside shareholders, so the advice serves your compliance, not a sales target.