Digital customs in Norway: with Digitoll, who reports what changes

THURSDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2026

Dal 15 settembre la notifica digitale anticipata è obbligatoria. Dal 1° marzo 2027 sparisce il margine dei dieci giorni per dichiarare dopo l’arrivo.

From 15 September Norway customs makes the first phase of Digitoll mandatory, and with it an advance digital notification that did not exist before. Anyone exporting to the country does not have a further form to fill in: they have to make sure someone else receives, in time, data that today often arrives late.

Digitoll, Norway customs in digital form

Digitoll is the system through which Tolletaten, the Norwegian customs administration, is moving the collection of information on incoming goods earlier. It does not replace the channel used to lodge customs declarations: it sits alongside it as a separate reporting layer.

The change happens in two stages, and the second weighs more than the first.

• First phase, mandatory from 15 September 2026: digital notification and information disclosure obligations become binding
• Second phase, from 1 March 2027: the customs declaration must be lodged no later than the moment goods cross the border
• Also from 1 March 2027: the direct transport scheme ends, which today allows goods to be taken to the recipient and declared within the following ten days
• European Union exports to Norway in 2025: around 64 billion euro
• Share of road and ferry volumes already handled through Digitoll at the end of 2025: around 16%, rising fast

For an Italian measure: in 2025 exports from Italy to Norway came close to 3.5 billion euro.

Who reports what, now

The part that really changes concerns how responsibility is divided, and it is why an Italian exporter cannot treat it as the carrier's business.

The operator of the means of transport is legally responsible for the notification: it must report electronically which goods it is carrying, with which vehicle, where and when it expects to cross the border, with references to the consignments on board. Responsibility for the customs declaration remains with the importer or the owner of the goods.

The point is that this data sits in different hands. Goods data is typically held by the freight forwarder, transport data by the carrier, and the commercial invoice that feeds both comes from the exporter. Until now a delay in the exchange between these parties was absorbed after the border; from that date it shows up before.

What it means and what it does not

It is worth separating the two levels, because more dramatic readings than warranted circulate on this subject.

The fact is that what changes is the moment at which the information must be available and who answers for transmitting it. It is not that new documents are needed: the commercial invoice, the description of goods, the classification and the origin were already required. What changes is that they must be correct and complete before departure, not at the border.

From this a reasonable expectation can be drawn, not a certainty: errors that used to be fixed with a phone call at customs will tend to show up as waits at the border. It is worth preparing for that, without concluding that there will be queues for everyone.

What to check if you ship to Norway

The first point is your freight forwarder. The useful question is not "are you ready for Digitoll", to which everyone will say yes, but "who do you receive transport data from, and how far in advance do you transmit it". The answer tells you whether the process actually exists.

The second concerns your documents. Generic goods descriptions, an approximate customs heading, undeclared origin: these are the three things that used to pass and that now reach the customs system before the truck leaves.

The third concerns the calendar. March 2027 seems far off, but it is the date that removes the ten days of breathing room after arrival: anyone relying on that margin today is using a mechanism with a known expiry.

With La Merce, exporting to Norway after Digitoll means having the invoice, the customs heading and the origin already correct when the goods leave the warehouse, because Norwegian customs now reads them before the border and no longer after.

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