Mr President, in the increasingly open economic climate in which the European Union must operate, and given the need to establish trade relations that ensure the competitiveness of undertakings, it is crucial that we establish a legal framework that sets the same rules of play for everyone. In this sense, the Community Customs Code is an essential support for the European Union’s trade policy, as well, as we are already aware, as being an essential instrument for protecting the Union’s financial interests. The progress made on the internal market, the gradual growth in trade due to the increasing opening up of the markets and the progress of the information society mean that the Community Customs Code needs to be brought up to date with the development of Community and international trade. Hence the need for and the timeliness of the reform that was proposed at the time with the aim of simplifying and rationalising customs procedures, precisely in response to the demands of the new realities that I have mentioned. On the other hand, it was also necessary, as I understood it, to establish effective monitoring measures to ensure the uniform application of customs procedures across the whole of the Community and to prevent unfair competition and the opening up of loopholes that could facilitate fraud. At the time Parliament therefore introduced some amendments with the aim, on the one hand, of guaranteeing the possibility of conducting customs procedures by means of computerised declarations, but without this unwittingly opening up the back door to fraud. On the other hand, the aim was to ensure that customs rules were applied correctly and consistently across the whole of the Community, in order to prevent situations of unfair competition. As the rapporteur pointed out, however, neither the Council nor the Commission adopted the specific amendments that I have mentioned, because, among other reasons, they considered that they did not add anything to the proposed text and that fraud should be combated outside the Community Customs Code. The Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market, as the rapporteur pointed out, accepted that approach, and therefore decided not to re-introduce the amendments. I personally continue to believe, however, that the text that was adopted by Parliament at the time responded much better to the new realities that had arisen from the internal market and the liberalisation of the markets, insofar as the elements of clarification and monitoring that were introduced by the amendments that were not adopted were a better guarantee that the rules would be complied with and that the same procedures would be followed when applying them. I must therefore regret that they were not taken into consideration, although I also understand the position of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market – the position of the rapporteur – of not re-introducing the amendments because, ultimately, what really matters is that the Community Customs Code and the proposed reforms move forward and that the legal framework is established. Let us hope that in the future we will at least be able to achieve those guarantees.

Political group: PPE-DE