3. 8. 89 Official Journal of the European Communities No C 198/9 
II 
(Preparatory Acts) 
COMMISSION 
Proposal for a Council Regulation (EEC) on the monitoring of the payment of the amounts 
granted on export of agricultural products (') 
COM(89) 294 final 
(Submitted by the Commission pursuant to Article 149 (3) of the EEC Treaty on 16 June 1989) 
(89/C 198/09) 
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITES, 
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European 
Economic Community, and in particular Article 43 
thereof, 
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission, 
Having regard to the opinion of the European 
Parliament, 
Whereas, pursuant to Article 8 of Council Regulation 
(EEC) No 729/70 of 21 April 1970 on the financing of 
the common agricultural policy (2), as last amended by 
Regulation (EEC) No 2048/88 (3), Member States are to 
take the measures necessary to satisfy themselves that 
transactions financed by the European Agricultural 
Guidance and Guarantee Fund (EAGGF) are actually 
carried out and are executed correctly, to prevent and 
deal with irregularities and to recover sums lost as a 
result of irregularities or negligence; 
Whereas, in its special report on the system of payment 
of agricultural export refunds (4), and in its annual report 
concerning the financial year 1987 (5), the Court of 
Auditors drew attention to a number of shortcomings in 
the monitoring of the payments of refunds in certain 
Member States; 
Whereas the system which, in principle, would afford 
the best safeguards without engendering economic 
constraints and administrative costs outweighing the 
(') OJ No C 239, 5. 7. 1987, p. 4. 
O OJ No L 94, 28. 4. 1970, p. 13. 
O OJ No L 185, 15. 7. 1988, p. 1. 
(4) OJ No C 215, 26. 8. 1985, p. 1. 
(5) OJ No C 316, 12. 12. 1988, p. 68. prospective gains for the Community purse would be one 
which combined measures to monitor movements of 
goods and measures to monitor the accounts; 
Whereas, in order to improve and harmonize the 
measures taken by the Member States, a Community 
monitoring system should be set up; 
Whereas such a system must be founded in particular on 
physical spot checks of goods at the time of export, 
including goods exported under a simplified procedure, 
and on the scrutiny of the payment application files by 
the paying agencies; whereas the audit to be conducted 
ex post facto in the undertakings concerned by the 
competent bodies is governed by the provisions of 
Council Regulation (EEC) No ... on scrutiny by 
Member States of transactions forming part of the 
system of financing by the Guarantee Section of the 
European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee 
Fund(6); 
Whereas the number of physical checks and laboratory 
tests must be increased in view of the importance of agri­
cultural refunds from the point of view of the 
Community budget, 
HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: 
Article 1 
1. This Regulation concerns the procedure for 
verifying that proper operations conferring entitlement to 
the payment of refunds on exports of goods and all other 
amounts in respect of export transactions have been 
carried out and executed correctly. 
2. For the purposes of this Regulation, the term 
'goods' means products in respect of which the amounts 
referred to in paragraph 1 are paid in accordance with 
Community provisions adopted within the framework of 
the common agricultural policy. 
(6) OJ No L 
No C 198/10 Official Journal of the European Communities 3. 8. 89 
Article 2 
Member States shall carry out: 
(a) physical checks on goods in accordance with 
Article 3, on the basis of documents submitted in 
support of the export declaration, at the time the 
customs export formalities are completed and before 
authorization is given for the goods in question to be 
exported; and 
(b) scrutiny of the documents in the payment application 
file in accordance with Article 4. 
Article 3 
1. Without prejudice to any specific provisions which 
require more extensive checks, the physical checks 
referred to in Article 2(a) must take the form of spot 
checks conducted frequently and without prior warning. 
In any case physical spot checks carried out at the time 
of completion of customs formalities must, without 
prejudice to particular cases to be defined in accordance 
with the procedure laid down in Article 6, relate to a 
representative sample of not less than 5 % of the export 
declarations in respect of which applications have been 
submitted for the amounts specified in Article 1 (1). 
2. In cases where ordinary visual inspection fails to 
establish that the goods correspond to the description 
given in the refunds nomenclature, and where classifi­
cation or the quality of the goods requires very precise 
information about the ingredients thereof, the customs 
authorities shall verify the description by submitting the 
goods for analysis by laboratories specially equipped for 
the purpose. 
3. The checks referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall 
be carried out without prejudice to any measures which 
the customs authorities may take to ensure that the 
goods leave the customs territory in the same state as 
when the export authorization was granted. 
Article 4 
Paying agencies shall scrutinize, on the basis of the 
payment application files and other available infor­
mation, in particular on the basis of the documents 
relating to the export and the comments of the customs 
services, all the evidence in these files adduced to justify 
the payment of the refunds in question. Article 5 
Member States shall take steps to coordinate the controls 
imposed on individual operators ensuring that the 
verifications provided for in Article 3 are conducted on 
the same occasion as those provided for in Article 4 and 
in Regulation (EEC) No . . . 
Such coordinated controls shall be carried out, in 
particular in cases of suspected fraud, on the initiative or 
at the request either of the Commission staff or of the 
customs authorities making the physical checks or the 
competent authorities scrutinizing the refund or auditing 
the accounts ex post facto. 
Article 6 
Any provisions required for the application of this Regu­
lation shall be adopted in accordance with the procedure 
laid down in Article 26 of Council Regulation (EEC) No 
2727/75 (') or, as appropriate, the corresponding articles 
of the other Regulations on the common organization of 
markets. 
They may relate in particular to: 
— the method for calculating the minimum percentage 
referred to in Article 3 (1); 
— the determination of cases where physical spot checks 
must relate to a representative sample of more than 
5%; 
— the list of goods referred to in Article 3 (2) and the 
minimum number of analyses referred to therein; 
— the coordination of controls between the competent 
departments of the Member States and the 
Commission staff; 
— the establishment of annual programmes of controls; 
— the notification of data relating to the application of 
this Regulation. 
Article 7 
This Regulation shall enter into force on the day of its 
publication in the Official Journal of the European 
Communities. 
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and 
directly applicable in all Member States. 
0) OJ No L 281, 1. 11. 1975, p. 1.