Days before resuming the traditional Friday opinion columns, Customs News spoke with Raquel Segalla Reis, who shared her perspective with clarity and depth. Raquel Segalla Reis is a young Brazilian researcher from the research group «Perspectives and Challenges of the Current Customs Administration» from the Catholic University of Brasilia, where he also earned his Master's degree in Law. He specializes in Customs Law and Foreign Trade from the University of Vale do Itajaí (UNIVALI), among other areas of specialization.
His work focuses on risk management in customs clearance and the use of artificial intelligence as a customs control tool. In this interview, we address three key issues regarding the challenges of customs law in Brazil, exploring his academic approach and highlighting the innovative legal criteria being pioneered in the country.
- In your analysis of Brazilian customs law, you highlight its role in regulating human conduct and protecting social goods and values. What do you consider to be the main challenges Brazil faces today in consolidating customs law that balances trade control and facilitation?
Let me answer this question by first discussing some of the challenges the Brazilian customs administration has faced in seeking to balance security and trade facilitation, and then addressing Brazilian customs law and its mission to articulate these and other functions of the Customs State.
Brazil is a country of vast territorial dimensions, and in this sense, the Federal Revenue Service's activities are not limited to the country's ports and airports but extend across its entire border, requiring technological mechanisms that allow for monitoring the immense flow of people, vehicles, and goods entering and leaving the country daily.
While we are strategically positioned to facilitate global value chains—with approximately 30% of the country's trade volume carried out by authorized economic operators—we have become a transit route for criminal organizations, whose fraudulent activities are becoming increasingly sophisticated, challenging customs surveillance and enforcement divisions on a daily basis.
Like other customs administrations around the world, Brazilian Customs has found a solution to balancing these challenges in the risk-based operating model, which requires access to information and smart technologies.
Regarding customs law itself, it should be noted that Brazilian customs regulations have been established through regulatory instruments issued directly by the Executive Branch, without achieving the desired codification to date. Despite some specific advances in legal regulation, especially in incorporating trade facilitation measures, we believe that the legal formalization of these various customs functions requires the enactment of a formal law that respects a truly democratic legislative process..
- Customs modernization in Brazil has advanced with the use of artificial intelligence, and you've addressed this topic in your research. How do you think these innovations can improve the efficiency of customs control and foreign trade?
The development and implementation of artificial intelligence tools in customs control activities have made Brazilian Customs a global leader in terms of digital transformation. The Brazilian Federal Revenue currently has a broad set of technological tools, whose applications range from passenger monitoring and vehicle control at borders to express remittance management and the use of machine learning to predict errors and fraud in customs clearance.
These solutions were conceived within a global context of trade facilitation, as well as the simplification and harmonization of customs procedures. Therefore, there is no doubt that algorithms and artificial intelligence have contributed to improved risk management by Brazilian customs. Numerous statistics demonstrate the benefits in terms of cost and time reduction, as well as the valorization of human capital, as these initiatives free up customs agents for more complex tasks.
However, the benefits achieved through the use of historical data, mathematical instructions, and self-learning systems in customs risk management cannot be separated from the discussion of their risks. In our research, we have demonstrated, with concrete examples, that automated decision-making processes based on autonomous algorithms can become discriminatory, erroneous, and lacking in transparency, which could indirectly affect the freedom and property of individuals.
This is not about adopting a denialist or prohibitive stance, which would be naive, given that the ongoing technological revolution demands a strategic approach to digital technologies, something that Brazilian Customs has been implementing for almost a decade. What we advocate is that this set of technical rules for customs control should be based not only on efficient risk management and algorithmic artificial intelligence processing, but also on another system of knowledge: the legal system.
The fundamental rights and guarantees of citizens must be the central pillar of the architecture of these tools, even when their application is justified by police power. The key, in our view, lies both in the legal regulation of their use and in the ability to audit and monitor their results.
- Do you believe that the addition of Portuguese to our media platform will contribute to more harmonious communication among readers, promoting greater understanding and strengthening knowledge of customs law, as well as trust, especially in these times of global challenges?
I have no doubt that the addition of Portuguese to the Aduana News platform will be beneficial not only for Brazilians and natives of other Portuguese-speaking countries, who can sometimes view Spanish as a barrier to knowledge acquisition, but also for the customs community in general. From now on, they will have access to the growing Brazilian academic output, given that the subject is increasingly present in universities.
Added to this is the opportunity to learn about the jurisdictional work of the administrative and judicial courts in this area, which have undergone significant technical development. It will also allow for close monitoring and better understanding of the initiatives of Brazilian Customs in the exercise of its essential functions.
Starting Friday, March 28, the 2025 columns begin. Raquel will be one of the featured columns this new season.
Aduana News is the first Argentine customs newspaper to launch its digital version. With 20 years of experience, its publications and initiatives aim to provide the most relevant knowledge on customs issues in order to contribute to safe trade in the region.
