CELEX: 51989PC0294
Language: en
Date: 1989-06-16
Title: PROPOSAL FOR A COUNCIL REGULATION ( EEC ) ON THE MONITORING OF THE PAYMENT OF THE AMOUNTS GRANTED ON EXPORT OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS

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