The following is excerpted from a 22 May 2013 news article by the International Chamber of Commerce.
ICC has published a collection of standards to help border authorities determine a standardized definition of a diligent trader. With a widely-accepted premise that low-risk traders should receive benefits for their investment in security and compliance, a variety of “trusted trader programmes”, commonly referred to as Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) programmes have been implemented worldwide.
Addressing the need for a harmonized understanding of what criteria should be used to objectively judge whether a company meets the definition of trusted trader the ICC paper offers a set of 59 baseline best practices of safe and secure conduct for cross-border traders in goods for use by traders when designing and managing AEO programmes and by governments when assessing risks represented by operators.
This article is available in its entirety at:
http://www.iccwbo.org/News/Articles/2013/New-ICC-standards-help-define-trusted-traders/