Anyone who ships regularly outside the EU knows that without an EORI code goods simply do not move. Understanding what the EORI code is, how to obtain it in Italy, how the validity of the EORI code works over time, and how to automate the EORI code verification within order flows is now a structural part of the work of anyone managing e-commerce operations.
Without this number, or with an incorrect EORI, the risk is blocking entire shipments at customs, creating delays that are difficult to explain to customers and generating a series of tickets for issues that could have been prevented upstream.
What the EORI code is, who needs it, and when it is mandatory
The EORI code is a unique EU-wide number, assigned by the customs authority of a Member State, that identifies the economic operator in all customs procedures within the Union. With a single standard format for everyone, the dialogue between companies and customs becomes faster and more traceable, because every declaration and every control are linked to the same identifier.
It must be requested by any economic operator established in the customs territory of the Union who carries out import or export operations with third countries. Operators not established in the EU can also obtain an EORI if they interact directly with European customs. In e-commerce, this means companies that ship outside the EU to end customers, but also companies that import stock from third countries and then resell it within the Union.
On a practical level, the EORI must be included in customs declarations, in import/export documentation and in electronic data-exchange systems. Without an EORI code, or with a number that is not registered, the goods risk being held until clarification, with costs and delays falling on the merchant and, ultimately, on the end customer’s experience.
In Italy, the format is relatively simple: “IT” followed by the VAT number for companies and VAT holders, or by the tax code for other entities, according to the rules of the Customs Agency.
EORI code validity: duration, registry updates and business changes
Once obtained, the validity of the EORI code is not tied to an automatic annual expiration: the EORI remains valid as long as the operator stays active and its data are correct in the customs registers. The code is registered at the national level and then made available in a central database of the European Commission, which is updated whenever the registrant’s information changes.
Every significant corporate change must be reflected in the EORI registration with the Member State that issued the code. For Italian companies, this means going through the Customs Agency and promptly updating their registry information so that the EORI remains aligned with reality.
How to obtain it in Italy
Moving on to how to obtain the EORI code in Italy, the process is fairly straightforward. The competent authority is the Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM), which through the EOS project (EORI + AEO) provides forms, operational instructions and the relevant regulations.
For Italian economic operators, a formal application must be submitted to the territorially competent customs office, using the institutional EORI code application form available on the ADM website.
The issuance is free of charge and, once registered at the national level, the EORI code becomes operational for all of the company’s customs operations within the EU. Some sources note that, for Italian businesses, the code may become “active” at the moment of the first actual customs operation, so it is good practice to request it and test its registration before going live with campaigns that involve extra-EU shipments.
EORI code verification: checks in the EU database and good archiving practices
Once obtained, the verification of the EORI code is equally crucial, especially when working with foreign partners, suppliers or B2B customers. The European Commission provides an official EORI validation service.
From an organizational standpoint, it is advisable to treat the EORI code as a critical compliance datum. This means storing it in a structured way within company systems, together with proof of the request and confirmation, and scheduling periodic checks on its validity, especially if the corporate structure changes or if the company opens new branches.
E-commerce, shipping & documents: integrating EORI into customs procedures and order data
Once it is clear what it is and how it works, the question for anyone managing an e-commerce business is how to make the EORI live within daily processes. The key point is to avoid having the EORI code typed manually “at the last moment” on documents or customs portals: it must be an integral, consistent and automated part of order data and customs procedures.
In practice, this means that the company’s EORI should be stored in the master data of the ERP system, the management software and the logistics platform, and automatically reported on commercial invoices, CN22/CN23 declarations where required, DAEs and every document or electronic flow sent to the courier or freight forwarder for extra-EU operations. When shipping to B2B customers who also have an EORI, the system should allow you to store the customer’s EORI and associate it with the relevant orders, thus avoiding requesting it by email each time or, worse, using incomplete numbers.
In the same way you work with HS codes or customs values, it is advisable to treat the EORI as a structural attribute of the order flow. This approach prevents downstream blocks, when the goods are already in the warehouse or even in transit. In a context of multi-courier shipments, integration becomes even more important. Each carrier has its own way of collecting customs data, different APIs, different forms, and mandatory fields that are not always consistent. If the EORI and other key data are managed at the platform level, rather than in each individual portal, the company can guarantee consistency across all couriers, preventing a data-entry error in one system from blocking only a portion of the shipments.
How Hubrise can help you scale international shipments
The role of Hubrise, and in particular SEND2U, is to scale international shipments while reducing errors and tickets related to customs and tracking. The key is ensuring that the EORI code is a piece of data governed by the engine that orchestrates orders and shipments.
SEND2U is an orchestration engine: it reads order data coming from the various channels, matches them with shipping rules and translates them into instructions for the couriers. In addition, by integrating Hubrise services, customs outcomes and any blocks are reflected in the consolidated tracking. This significantly reduces the number of tickets related to “shipment stuck in customs” and allows the team to intervene with precise information, instead of having to chase different freight forwarders and portals.
Connecting the EORI code to an engine like SEND2U means being able to automate not only carrier selection, but also consistency checks on customs data before label generation. For an operations manager who truly wants to scale export activities, this is the real step up: not limiting themselves to asking “how to obtain the EORI code,” but deciding how to integrate it structurally into processes and tools, leveraging a smart delivery platform like SEND2U to turn a customs requirement into an operational advantage.