The New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) is a European wide system, based upon electronic declaration and processing, designed to provide better management and control of Community and Common Transit. It involves all EU Member States, the EFTA and V4 countries (22 countries in all).

The National Administration of each country will develop its own NCTS structure, according to centrally defined architecture, which will be connected, through a central domain in Brussels, to all of the other countries. The NCTS will link some 3000 European Customs offices and eventually replace the existing paper based system. The aim is that all traders will eventually input all transit declarations, and any other necessary messages, such as arrival of the goods, to the NCTS, electronically.

The NCTS has already been successfully introduced and is in operation in, and between, several Member States, such as Netherlands, Spain and Germany, and some other contracting parties, such as Norway, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. All other countries, including the UK, are committed to connect to the central NCTS system by the end of June 2003. This does not mean that all European customs offices will switch to NCTS by this date; this will only be the start of a phased roll-out, over several years, during which the current paper based 'old transit system' (OTS) will continue to operate in parallel with the NCTS.