NCTS Countries List: EFTA, EU and Common Transit Convention Nations Explained
- John Hall
- Customs Specialist at iCustoms.ai
Twelve contracting parties now sit inside the Common Transit Convention network that NCTS runs on: the EU, treated as one territory of 27 member states, plus eleven separate countries outside it. The list has grown twice in the past two years, most recently with Moldova and Montenegro joining alongside Georgia. This guide sets out who is actually covered, what Union transit and common transit mean for each of them, and where TIR, the ATA carnet and a handful of specialised procedures sit alongside the main system.
NCTS Countries at a Glance
The current NCTS Countries are the European Union as a single territory, the United Kingdom, the four EFTA states, and seven further contracting parties: Türkiye, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Montenegro. Every one of them uses the same underlying message set and the same declaration structure, whichever authority a business happens to be filing with.
| Contracting party | Type | Transit type used |
|---|---|---|
| European Union (27 member states) | Single customs territory | Union transit internally, common transit with the rest of the network |
| United Kingdom | Individual contracting party | Common transit |
| Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland | EFTA states | Common transit |
| Türkiye, North Macedonia, Serbia | Long-standing contracting parties | Common transit |
| Ukraine | Long-standing contracting party | Common transit |
| Moldova, Georgia, Montenegro | Most recent accessions (2025) | Common transit |
Union Transit vs Common Transit
Union Transit applies to movements that stay entirely within the customs territory of the EU, governed by the Union Customs Code. Common Transit is the wider version created by the Common Transit Convention, extending the same mechanism to the non-EU contracting parties on this list. A UK-filed movement always runs as common transit, since the UK sits outside the EU customs territory. Our EU customs transit procedure guide covers this distinction in full.
NCTS EU Countries
The 27 EU member states operate as a single territory for Union transit purposes under the Union Customs Code. A movement that never leaves that territory does not need common transit at all, even though it may cross several internal member state borders on the way.
NCTS EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland)
The four EFTA states were among the original parties to bring common transit into existence alongside the EU. Liechtenstein participates through its customs union with Switzerland rather than as a separately operated system. Movements to or from any of the four run as common transit, using the same guarantee and message structure as a movement to the UK or Türkiye.
NCTS UK
NCTS UK operates as its own contracting party, run by HMRC, separate from the EU customs territory since the UK’s exit from it. Every UK movement into or out of the Common Transit Convention area runs as common transit, never Union transit, regardless of the goods’ origin.
The Newest Members: NCTS Georgia, NCTS Moldova and NCTS Montenegro
NCTS Georgia joined the Common Transit Convention and the New Computerised Transit System from February 2025, extending the network into the South Caucasus for the first time. NCTS Moldova and NCTS Montenegro followed at the end of October 2025, bringing the total number of contracting parties to twelve. None of these accessions changes how a movement is filed elsewhere in the network; they simply extend the same declaration, guarantee and message structure to routes that previously needed a different procedure entirely.
For a business already filing under NCTS, an accession like this mainly changes what is possible, not what is required. A route into Georgia, Moldova or Montenegro that previously needed a separate customs procedure at that border, or a different transit system altogether, can now run under the same declaration, the same guarantee and the same message set as a movement to Switzerland or Serbia. The practical effect shows up first for hauliers and forwarders already running Balkan and eastern European corridors, since these three sit directly on routes many of them already use.
NCTS Türkiye, NCTS North Macedonia, NCTS Serbia and NCTS Ukraine
These four have been contracting parties for longer and are the ones most road hauliers already route through regularly. NCTS Türkiye sits at the edge of the network for onward Middle Eastern routes. NCTS North Macedonia and NCTS Serbia cover the western Balkan corridor. NCTS Ukraine remains part of the network throughout, with movements filed the same way as any other contracting party.
The NCTS 1987 Convention and the NCTS Transit Manual
The legal foundation for all of this is the NCTS 1987 Convention, the original Convention on a Common Transit Procedure agreed between the EU and the EFTA states, later extended to every other contracting party on this list. The operational detail sits in the NCTS Transit Manual, the European Commission’s working reference for how the procedure, its message types and its exceptions actually apply. It is the primary source behind most of the specifics in this guide.
HMRC’s own Transit Manual Supplement adds the UK-specific operational layer on top of that, including the Business Continuity Procedure: a paper-based fallback used when NCTS itself is unavailable, whether through scheduled downtime agreed in advance, an unscheduled outage running longer than two hours with no fix time identified, or a trader’s own transit software being down. Any movement started under the Business Continuity Procedure has to be closed under that same procedure rather than switched into NCTS partway through, and traders have to revert to NCTS as soon as it is restored.
Alternatives and Special Procedures
A handful of movements sit outside the standard NCTS declaration entirely. The international road transport (TIR) procedure is a separate system, using its own carnet and guaranteeing associations, generally chosen for road legs that run beyond the Common Transit Convention network rather than within it. An ATA carnet serves a different purpose again: a document for the temporary export, transit and temporary admission of goods such as exhibition items, professional equipment or commercial samples, and it can also serve as proof of Union status.
NCTS for NATO and Military movements uses NATO Form 302 rather than a standard NCTS declaration, controlling transit of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) eligible military goods moving in and between NATO countries and countries in the Partnership for Peace (PfP), which includes Switzerland and, since October 2022, Ukraine. A Form 302 movement can itself stand in for a transit declaration, so it does not always need a separate NCTS entry alongside it, though it cannot be used for movements between commercial enterprises. Behind these movements sits the Specimen Management System (SMS), run by HMRC’s Central Customs Transit Office, which holds the specimen transit stamps, authorised consignor stamps, guarantee certificates and authorised seals that offices of departure, transit and destination check a movement against; any of these that go missing or are misused has to be reported to the Central Customs Transit Office immediately.
Two further procedures cover specific movement types rather than general cargo. NCTS Rhine Waterways covers goods carried under the Rhine Manifest system on that river network. NCTS for Postal service applies a simplified set of rules to goods carried by post, reflecting the different way postal items are handled compared with commercial freight.
Frequently Asked Questions
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