A few posts ago, we broke down customs clearance into five steps – from the entry summary declaration to the release – and also mentioned some guidelines regarding the duration. However, the question we are asked most frequently is not about the individual steps at all. It is: How long does the whole process take in practice, and does the answer change depending on which side of the German-Polish border a shipment arrives?
The question is justified, because both countries operate under the same EU rulebook, but they do not have quite the same reputation. In the World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, German customs scores 3.9 out of 5 points for efficiency, making it one of the strongest in the EU. Poland is closer to 3.4, in the same league as Italy and Ireland. On paper, this gap seems small. In practice, it is often the difference between a shipment that is cleared before the driver has finished their coffee and one that stands still for an extra day for no apparent reason.
Average clearance times in EU ports
Germany processes customs declarations via ATLAS, the customs' electronic platform, which has been de facto mandatory since the "ATLAS 10.2" release. Poland works with AIS/IMPORT PLUS, a newer system introduced by the Krajowa Administracja Skarbowa (KAS) in June 2025 as the successor to the previous AIS/IMPORT platform; submissions are made via the PUESC portal. Both work on the same principle: a declaration is submitted, an automated risk analysis assigns it to a channel, and this channel determines what happens next.
The channel outcomes are almost identical in both countries. Green means release without further inspection. Yellow means a document check, which usually adds one to three working days. Red means a physical inspection, which adds another three to seven working days on top. Most clean, consistent declarations end up in the green or yellow channel in both countries; the numbers only diverge when there is actually something wrong with the documentation.
Larger differences between the two markets show up at the port level. Hamburg remains the workhorse for German imports, with quite reliable clearance once a declaration is accepted. In Poland, the Baltic Hub in Gdańsk is the only deep-water terminal on the Baltic Sea that can directly handle the largest container ships without prior feeder transhipment in Rotterdam or Hamburg. This shortens the total transit time, even though the clearance process itself takes a similar number of days. Gdynia, just a bit further up the coast, usually offers more generous demurrage-free times before fees apply – in some cases significantly more than some terminals in Gdańsk. This does not make customs clearance any faster. However, it does change how much a delay costs you while you wait for release.
Air vs. Sea Freight: What affects clearance speed?
Air freight is considered to clear faster than sea freight, and most of the time that is true – but not for the reason most people assume. It is not because customs officers at the airport work faster. It is because the air freight documents usually arrive before the goods do, sometimes hours before landing. This gives customs a head start on the risk analysis before the shipment is even physically on site. A clean air freight shipment through Frankfurt, Germany's largest cargo hub and one of the busiest in the world, can be cleared within a few hours.
With sea freight, the same time window can be shortened if the documents are on their way early enough. With a Full Container Load (FCL), your customs broker can submit the declaration even before the ship berths, so that clearance can already run in the background when the container is on the quay. Less than Container Load (LCL) shipments lose this advantage because the container must first be unloaded before individual shipments can be inspected. If one importer's goods in a shared container are flagged, everyone else waits as well.
Poland has no direct counterpart to Frankfurt in air freight. Warsaw Chopin handles only a fraction of the volume. For time-critical shipments to Poland, it is therefore sometimes faster to fly to Frankfurt and cover the last leg by truck than to book a direct flight to Warsaw – the same logic by which freight forwarders occasionally route cargo for France via Frankfurt instead of Paris. The lesson applies to both markets: the mode of transport is less decisive than how early the documents get moving.
What happens when customs holds your goods?
A hold is not a single event, but a status – and which status is active determines what you should actually do. A hold in the yellow channel means that customs wants to see certain documents – the commercial invoice, a certificate, a proof of origin – before releasing the goods; a physical inspection does not take place. Your customs broker usually receives the request within one day after submitting the declaration, and a complete, correct response usually resolves the matter within the one to three days mentioned above.
A hold in the red channel is a problem of a different scale. The container is pulled for inspection, an officer opens it, matches the cargo with the declaration, and the shipment does not move again until that is done. Here, the availability of inspectors and access to the cargo matter just as much as the documentation – which is why the estimate of three to seven days is subject to more uncertainty than the figure for the yellow channel.
With both types of holds, storage costs continue to accumulate, whether as demurrage from the terminal or detention from the shipping line, and neither authority stops the clock while you source documents. The rarer but more serious consequence: Under the Union Customs Code (UCC), goods that cannot be released for reasons attributable to the importer and remain in this state beyond the period granted by customs can ultimately be confiscated, sold, or destroyed. With a common document delay resolved in a reasonable timeframe, this is not a realistic scenario. The rule exists for truly abandoned or non-compliant goods. However, that is exactly why it is more important than most importers realize – until it happens to them – to treat every hold notice as urgent and not postpone it until next week.
The most common causes of delays in EU customs
We have already covered the usual suspects: discrepant values between invoice and declaration, vague description of goods, a delayed entry summary declaration, missing certificates for regulated goods, untreated wood pallets that do not meet the ISPM 15 standard. They remain responsible for most delays in both countries and should be checked first before assuming a more complex problem.
Some causes affect one country more than the other. Poland's AIS/IMPORT PLUS system is still relatively new – it only replaced the old platform in mid-2025 – and customs brokers or importers who have not yet fully adjusted to the data requirements occasionally stumble over the new format, particularly with the supplementary VAT declaration, which is now due within ten days of release. Furthermore, Poland lies on the EU's external border with Belarus and Ukraine, so disruptions keep occurring at certain eastern land border crossings that simply play no role on Germany's more central routes. And because Germany levies 19% import VAT and Poland 23%, a company using the same calculation template for both markets can misdeclare its tax liability without ever getting an HS code wrong – an error that is not noticed at the border, but only later, causing its own unique delay as soon as it is discovered.
How to speed up EU customs clearance
Most tips that apply to Germany also work for Poland: apply for your EORI number well in advance of the shipment, keep goods descriptions and declared values identical across all documents, and ensure that official certificates are available before the goods arrive – not only when a hold requests them.
For companies shipping to both markets, a few additional points are worth considering. Both German customs and the KAS assess importers according to their risk, and a clean compliance history in one country does not automatically transfer to the other – it pays to actively build this history in each country. If you ship regularly, consider a deferment account (duty deferment) in both Germany and Poland instead of just in the country where you started, as the liquidity benefit grows as soon as you move volumes through both countries. AEO status and, in the future, the "Trust and Check Trader" status planned by the EU are worth applying for as soon as volume justifies it, as they are recognized EU-wide and not just in individual countries. And where you actually have a choice of port, the longer demurrage-free time window in Gdynia may be worth more to your margin than the slightly shorter transit time via Gdańsk – depending on how tight your delivery schedule actually is.
However, the greatest lever remains a single customs broker who declares in both ATLAS and AIS/IMPORT PLUS, so that the same eyes match your invoices with your packing lists – before submission and not only when a hold notice arrives – regardless of which side of the border the shipment goes to.
We declare in ATLAS and AIS/IMPORT PLUS from the same desk. So if you ship to Germany, Poland, or both countries, get in touch with us, and we will go through your recent shipments together to see where time is actually being lost.
