Mr President, I should like to begin by praising the fine work done by my colleague, Salvador Garriga Polledo, in the report he is presenting on own resources, a subject he has been following very closely for some time. The Community budget comes, in part, from the traditional own resources raised by the Member States’ customs services and therefore the principal role of Community legislation on guarantees and securities is to protect the financial interests of the Community. The defects in the procedures applicable to the security and guarantee system mean precisely that the corresponding Community revenue is not collected and has to be covered by additional GNP contributions from the Member States. Therefore, I understand that interest should be levied on traders who effectively use unauthorised credit in their deferment accounts as part of release for free circulation operations. The Garriga Polledo report deals with cases under Member State responsibility in which a failure to enforce Community legislation on securities and guarantees harms the Community’s interests. According to the Court of Auditors, in cases of mandatory securities the basic principle is that the customs authorities should fix the security at a level equal to the precise amount of the customs debt where this can be established with certainty, or if not, the maximum amount, as estimated by the customs authorities, of the customs debts which have been, or may be, incurred. In practice, it is the security or guarantee body that assesses the risks of the operation. In order for these risks to be assessed, the guarantee should be fixed at the closest possible level to the customs debt for which the security or guarantee is provided. If these rules were observed, the pertinent financial interests would be fully protected. A number of difficulties arise in this and I shall highlight half a dozen: First of all, there are no reliable statistics on the volume of guarantees currently granted. The data on these securities and guarantees, which are clearly identified in accounting and legal terms, certainly exists in the customs accounting departments of Member States, but there are no procedures to enable it to be collated and known at Community level. Secondly, some customs authorities cannot – I prefer to think this rather than that they do not collaborate – effectively monitor observance of the requirements set out in Community legislation on guarantees because of failures in their accountancy operating or computer systems and procedures. I must stress the need for the New Computerised Transit System (NCTS) to come into operation soon in all the Member States and the countries associated with the common transit system. It is clear that the fulfilment of Community securities will depend, to a large extent, on the development of all the operations of the NCTS. To solve the problem of the high level of undischarged transit operations, we should emphasise the importance of operational measures and, again, the need for swift development of this new system. With the multiple guarantee certificate system and the NCTS we shall achieve centralisation and greater administrative clarity. Thirdly, incomplete declarations must be mentioned. At the end of the periods allowed under Community rules the Member States should transfer the duties covered by a guarantee which are not contested into ‘A’ accounts. Fourthly, the need for a change to Community customs legislation in order to ensure that the securities which guarantee the right to credit should also guarantee the automatic payments made by the customs offices after release of goods. Fifthly, the large number of cases reported by the Court of Auditors in which the amounts owed to the Community budget have not been paid or received with the relevant late payment interest. Lastly, I should like to mention the difficulties giving rise to the failure to collect the considerable amounts of customs duties and other taxes arising from TIR operations, which are attributable to ineffective implementation of existing mechanisms and a lack of monitoring of transit operations. To conclude, Mr President, I want to stress that the Commission must study the various problems raised and, in particular, review the computer system in order to take into account the interest owed in this respect to the Community budget by the Member States.

Political group: PPE-DE