UN Recommendation Number 4*, dating back to 1974, encouraged nations to develop trade facilitation committees. The PRO committees were the response, bringing together business and government stakeholders to promote the simplification, harmonization, standardization and modernization of trade procedures.

Our first aim is to promote discussion of easier, cheaper, better trade procedures and processes.

Because it is our members who work at national level, our second aim is to help them. By sharing information we can add extra dimensions to organisations that are mostly small and under-resourced. By having ideas, creating policies and working out what we think about things, we offer members material that they can use to influence the national and international debate about trade.

Our third aim is, as EUROPRO, to build relationships beyond the purely national level, by talking to decision makers in international bodies like the World Customs Organisation or the European Commission. This gives us a chance of encouraging more powerful people to get to grips with the issues we hold dear and to do something to improve the way international trade works.

Above all, we want to persuade people that reducing the burden and costs of international trade while improving the quality and effectiveness of border controls is not just desirable but essential to Europe's long-term competitiveness. And we believe that it is perfectly possible. Trade facilitation is not a zero sum game in which a 'victory' by one side must mean a loss by the other. On the contrary, we are convinced everyone can win, and our work is to open others' eyes to the options and possibilities.

Europro constitution