1.1. Coordinated Border Management – A New, Old Concept?
Coordinated Border Management (CBM) refers to a coordinated approach by border control agencies, both domestic and international, in the context of seeking greater efficiencies over managing trade and travel flows, while maintaining a balance with compliance requirements.
The CBM concept is not a new one. The WCO had published the Customs Compendium for Integrated Border Management in 2006 that outlines the key elements of an Integrated Border Management System, as well as planning and implementation issues. Many of these elements addressed in the Compendium published in 2006 are still relevant today. Over the years, variations of the term had surfaced across various forums. It is known as “Integrated Border Management” by the European Union, “Collaborative Border Management” by the World Bank and “Comprehensive Border Management” by the OSCE.
These terms all refer to very similar things, which is essentially the holistic approach involving all cross-border regulatory agencies so that their regulatory functions are discharged in a coordinated manner.
In this compendium, the term “Coordinated Border Management” was adopted in favuor of the former name “Integrated Border Management” due to the fact that “Integrated” seemed to pre-suppose structural and institutional integration, which potentially narrows the scope of the concept – the WCO believes that CBM is much broader in the sense that resources, functions, processes and legislations have to be mobilized around a shared vision of effective and efficient border management and there are several solutions to achieve that where an integration of services is just one of the option.