Keywords

Summary



Keywords

++++

1. Common Customs Tariff ° Community tariff quotas ° Frozen beef ° Management of quotas ° Division of powers between the Member States and the Commission

(Council Regulations Nos 3889/89 and 3838/90; Commission Regulations Nos 4024/89 and 3885/90)

2. Common Customs Tariff ° Community tariff quotas ° Frozen beef ° Time-limit for notification by the Member States to the Commission of quantities not applied for ° Not imperative ° Commission' s obligation to undertake reallocation

(Council Regulation No 3889/89, Art. 3)

3. Common Customs Tariff ° Community tariff quotas ° Frozen beef ° Sharing of the main quota between the various importer applicants ° Several traders claiming to have imported the same reference quantity ° Commission' s management powers ° Importers concerned required to provide a guarantee ° Whether permissible

(Commission Regulations No 3885/90, Art. 5, and No 519/91, Art. 2)

Summary

1. Regulations Nos 3889/89 and 3838/90 opening and providing for the administration of a Community tariff quota for frozen beef for 1990 and 1991 respectively, and implementing Regulations Nos 4024/89 and 3885/90, divided the tasks and responsibilities with regard to the management of those quotas as between the Member States and the Commission. Within that division of tasks and responsibilities, it is for the authorities designated by the Member States to receive applications and draw up a list of those eligible under the rules, together with the quantities to be taken into consideration, on the basis of documents presented to them by way of proof. The Commission' s task is confined to checking that a given applicant does not appear on more than one list and to determining, having regard to the quantities indicated in the various national lists and to the total quota to be allocated, in what proportion the national authorities can accept the applications admitted by them. The Commission is neither under a duty nor empowered to check the correctness of the lists or information notified to it by the Member States' authorities and does not itself allocate or reallocate the quantities to the persons entitled.

Such a division of tasks and responsibilities does not conflict with the Council' s intention, as stated in the preambles to Regulations Nos 3889/89 and 3838/90, to introduce a Community method for the management of the tariff quotas at issue. Such a management method may be achieved by decentralized management, involving the Member States' authorities, since economic operators are at liberty to submit their applications in the Member State of their choice and applications are processed in accordance with uniform rules applicable throughout the Community. Nor, moreover, does it entail that the Commission ought necessarily to be able to correct wrong decisions taken in specific cases by the national authorities in the exercise of the powers given to them.

2. The time-limit provided for by Article 3 of Regulation No 3889/89 within which the Member States are to notify to the Commission the quantities of the Community tariff quota for frozen beef for which no applications for import certificates have been submitted during the first eight months of the current year, with a view to their reallocation, is not imperative and a Member State' s failure to comply with it does not exempt the Commission from its obligation to reallocate all unutilized quantities as fully as possible in order to secure the full utilization of the annual quota.

3. Article 5 of Regulation No 3885/90 which, in the context of the management of a Community tariff quota for frozen beef, authorizes the Commission, in a case in which one applicant lodges several applications for import certificates in two or more Member States, to declare all the applications in question inadmissible, does not apply to the case where several applicants lodge applications relating to the same reference quantities in two Member States. In order to obviate a situation where, in such a case, imports were effected twice on the basis of the same reference quantity, Article 2 of Regulation No 519/91, determining the extent to which applications lodged might be accepted, lawfully provided that import certificates relating to that reference quantity could only be issued provided the importers concerned lodged a guarantee, the amount of which was equal to the basic import levy for the meat in question, increased by 10%, the guarantee being released when the operator concerned was definitively identified as the importer of the reference quantity at issue.