Commission Regulation (EC) No 1669/2001 of 20 August 2001 amending Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1917/2000 laying down certain provisions for the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 1172/95 as regards statistics on external trade (Text with EEA relevance)
Date: 2001-08-20
Institutions: European Commission
Subjects: EU statistics, exchange of information, foreign trade, trading operation

21.8.2001

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

L 224/3

COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1669/2001

of 20 August 2001

amending Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1917/2000 laying down certain provisions for the
implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 1172/95 as regards statistics on external trade

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European
Community,

Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 1172/95 of 22
May 1995 on the statistics relating to the trading of goods by
the Community and its Members States with non-member
countries (1), as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 374/98 (2),
and in particular Article 21 thereof,

Whereas:

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

The use of a threshold for each transaction for external
trade statistics may allow appreciable savings in the
costs for collecting the information, at the cost of a
limited loss of accuracy.

Exhaustive coverage of external trade statistics must be
their use at macro
assured, particularly in view of
economic level for drawing up the national accounts
and the balances of payments. The use of a statistical
threshold must
therefore be compensated for by an
estimate of the data below the threshold.

The amount of the statistical threshold was calculated in
such a way as to meet fully the objective of savings in
the collection costs, while taking account of price trends
and respecting the relevance and accuracy of the statis-
tics published in accordance with the Combined Nomen-
clature.

Other procedures may enable the burden of data collec-
tion to be simplified and limited without any effect on
quality,
for example by using electronic declarations.
Application of the statistical threshold must therefore
remain optional.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in
accordance with the opinion of
the Committee on
External Trade Statistics,

Article 1

Article 3 of Commission Regulation (EC) No 1917/2000 (3)
shall be replaced by the following:

‘Article 3

The statistical threshold referred to in Article 12 of
1.
the Basic Regulation shall be fixed, for each type of goods,
so that imports or exports exceeding EUR 1 000 in value
or 1 000 kg in net mass shall be collected for the produc-
tion of external trade statistics.

Application by the Member States of the threshold

2.
referred to in paragraph 1 shall remain optional.

3.
The data transmitted periodically by the Member
States applying a statistical threshold shall be adjusted so
that the value of trade situated below the threshold is
included in the external trade statistics, at least for total
products.

In the absence of harmonised provisions adopted by the
Commission in accordance with the procedure set out in
Article 21 of the Basic Regulation, each Member State shall
use the method of adjustment it considers most appro-
priate.

4. Member States applying a statistical threshold shall
inform the Commission of the amount of that threshold
and the method of adjustment used.’

Article 2

This Regulation shall enter
into force on the 20th day
following its publication in the Official Journal of the European
Communities.

It shall apply from 1 January 2002.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

Done at Brussels, 20 August 2001.

For the Commission

Pedro SOLBES MIRA

Member of the Commission

(1) OJ L 118, 25.5.1995, p. 10.
(2) OJ L 48, 19.2.1998, p. 6.

(3) OJ L 229, 9.9.2000, p. 14.