REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the exercise of the power to adopt delegated acts conferred on the Commission under Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics relating to the trading of goods between Member States
Date: 2018-11-20
Institutions: European Commission, Eurostat
Subjects: EU statistics, European Commission, customs regulations, delegated legislation, exchange of information, intra-EU trade, powers of the institutions (EU), trade statistics, trading operation, transfer of competence

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  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 20.11.2018 COM(2018) 754 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the exercise of the power to adopt delegated acts conferred on the Commission under Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics relating to the trading of goods between Member States   
 
 
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND 
THE COUNCIL 

on the exercise of the power to adopt delegated acts conferred on the Commission under 
Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on 
Community statistics relating to the trading of goods between Member States 

1. 

BACKGROUND 

Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 
March  2004  on  Community  statistics  relating  to  the  trading  of  goods  between 
Member  States1,  confers  on  the  Commission  the  power  to  adopt  delegated  acts  in 
accordance with Article 13a. Article 3(4) and Article 10(3), (4) and (5) empower the 
Commission to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 13a: 

 

 

 

 

relating  to  different  or  specific  rules  applying  to  specific  goods  or 
movements; 
to adapt the Intrastat coverage rates to technical and economic developments 
whenever  it  is  possible  to  reduce  them,  while  maintaining  statistics  which 
meet the quality indicators and standards in force; and 
to  specify  the  conditions  for  defining  other  thresholds  below  which  parties 
may benefit from certain simplifications; and 
to specify the conditions, which meet quality requirements, under which the 
Member  States  may  simplify  the  information  to  be  provided  for  small 
individual transactions, provided that such simplification has no detrimental 
effects on the quality of the statistics. 

In addition, point (a) of Article 12(1) empowers the Commission to adopt delegated 
acts to define the aggregated data of the monthly results of statistics relating to the 
trading  of  goods  between  Member  States,  which  are  to  be  transmitted  by  the 
Member States to the Commission (Eurostat) no later than 40 calendar days after the 
end of the reference month. Those delegated acts must take into account the relevant 
economic and technical developments. 

Under  Article  13a(3)  of  the  Regulation,  the  power  to  adopt  delegated  acts  is 
conferred for a  period of five  years from  17 July 2014. This  power is  to be tacitly 
extended  for  periods  of  five  years  unless  the  European  Parliament  or  the  Council 
objects. 

The Commission is required to draw up a report on the delegation of power not later 
than nine months before the end of the five-year period. 

This report fulfils this obligation. 

2. 

COMMISSION  EXERCISE  OF  DELEGATED  POWERS  UNDER  REGULATION  (EC) 
NO 638/2004 

The Commission has not yet exercised the power to adopt delegated acts conferred 
on it by Regulation (EC) No 638/2004. 

1 OJ L 102, 7.4.2004, p.1. 

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The reason is the following: the powers delegated in Article 3(4), Article 10(3), (4) 
and (5) and point (a) of Article 12(1) date from 2014.  

Since then there has been no need to  set  out  different  or specific rules applying to 
specific  goods  or  movements  as  referred  in  Article  3(4),  to  reduce  the  Intrastat 
coverage  rate  referred  in  Article  10(3)  or  to  specify  conditions  concerning  the 
simplifications referred in Article 10(4) and (5).  

There has also been no need to define the aggregated data of the monthly results to 
be  transmitted  by  the  Member  States  to  the  Commission  (Eurostat)  referred  to  in 
point (a) of Article 12(1). 

3. 

CONCLUSIONS 

The Commission has not yet exercised the power to adopt delegated acts conferred 
on it by Regulation (EC) No 638/2004. 

The Commission is of the view that it should continue to have the delegated powers 
conferred  by  Article 13a  of  the  Regulation  (EC)  No  638/2004,  as  in  the  future  it 
might be necessary to exercise these delegated powers. 

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