TRACES NT is the European Commission's platform for sanitary and phytosanitary certification. If you are integrating customs or logistics software with EU processes, it is the system your data eventually has to agree with. TRACES Classic, its 2004 predecessor, was decommissioned in 2022.
The technical shape of the platform
Authentication runs on EU Login with two-factor authentication, replacing the system-specific credentials Classic used. That matters for anyone designing a user provisioning flow, because identity is federated at EU level rather than held per application.
Document handling centres on four CHED types: CHED-A, CHED-P, CHED-PP and CHED-D. Electronic signatures are native and carry EU-wide legal recognition, which removes the print-sign-scan cycle Classic depended on.
Integration surface
Classic offered limited external integration. TRACES NT is interoperable with customs IT systems, iRASFF and other EU digital systems, and it sits as a core component of IMSOC alongside ADIS and EUROPHYT. Reporting moved from QlikView to Qlik Sense in 2024, with filtering that suits operational dashboards rather than fixed reports. The architectural contrast between the two generations is documented in this TRACES NT vs TRACES Classic technical comparison.
Where engineering effort pays off
The platform is not the bottleneck. Manual entry is. Consignment details, certificate numbers and establishment codes are typed in and verified against official lists by people. Any pipeline that extracts those fields from source documents and validates codes before submission removes the most common cause of border holds.
Scale to design for
Over 113,000 users across 90+ countries, and more than 5.4 million official documents processed in 2024.
See how iCustoms fits alongside the EU certification stack: watch a demo.
