Council Regulation (EEC) No 3004/88 of 26 September 1988 opening, allocating and providing for the administration of a Community tariff quota for certain wines having a registered designation of origin and originating in Tunisia (1988/89)

COUNCIL  REGULATION (EEC) No 3004/88
of 26 September 1988
opening, allocating and providing for the administration of a Community tariff quota for certain wines having a registered designation of origin and originating in Tunisia (1988/89)
THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
,
Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community and in particular Article 113 thereof,
Having regard to the proposal from the Commission,
Whereas Article 3 of the Additional Protocol to the Cooperation Agreement between the European Economic Community and the Republic of Tunisia (1) stipulates that certain wines having a registered designation of origin falling within CN codes ex 2204 21 25, ex 2204 21 29, ex 2204 21 35 and ex 2204 21 39 and originating in Tunisia, as specified in the Agreement in the form of an Exchange of Letters and produced from the 1977 and subsequent harvests, shall be imported into the Community free of customs duties within the limits of an annual Community tariff quota of 50 000 hectolitres;
Whereas these wines must be put up in containers holding two litres or less; whereas they must be accompanied either by a certificate of designation of origin in accordance with the model given in Annex D to the abovementioned Agreement or, by way of derogation, by a document V I 1 or an extract V I 2 annotated in compliance with Article 9 of Regulation (EEC) No 3590/85 (2); whereas the abovementioned Community tariff quota in question should therefore be opened for the period 1 November 1988 to 31 October 1989;
Whereas the wines in question are subject to compliance with the free-at-frontier reference price; whereas, in order for these wines to benefit from the tariff quota, article 54 of Regulation (EEC) No 822/87 (3) must be complied with;
Whereas Council Regulation (EEC) No 2573/87 of 11 August 1987 laying down the arrangements for trade between Spain and Portugal on the one hand and Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia and Turkey on the other (4) provides that the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic shall apply, from the date on which the Regulation enters into force, a duty reducing the gap between the rate of the basic duty and that of the preferential duty; whereas the Portuguese Republic is to defer application of the preferential arrangements for the products in question until the start of the second stage; whereas this present Regulation therefore applies to the Community with the exception of Portugal;
Whereas it is in particular necessary to ensure equal and uninterrupted access for all Community importers to the abovementioned quota and uninterrupted application of the rates laid down for this quota to all imports of the products concerned into the Member States until the quota has been used up; whereas a system of using a Community tariff quota, based on allocation among the Member States, appears likely to compiy with the Community nature of the said quota having regard to the above principles; whereas, in order to reflect most accurately the actual development of the market in the products in question, such allocation should be in proportion to the requirements of the Member States assessed by reference both to the statistics relating to imports of the said products from Tunisia over a representative reference period and to the economic outlook for the quota period concerned;
Whereas in this case, however, neither Community nor national statistics showing the breakdown for each of the types of wines in question are available and no reliable estimates of future imports can be made; whereas in these circumstances the quota volumes should be allocated in initial shares, taking into account data on the effective utilization of these wines on the markets of the various Member States;
Whereas, in order to take into account import trends for the products concerned in the various Member States, quotas should be divided into two parts, the first being shared among certain Member States and the second constituting a reserve to cover the subsequent requirements of these Member States where they have
used up their initial shares and any additional requirements which might arise in the other Member States; whereas, in order to give importers in each Member State a certain degree of security, the first part of the Community quota should, in these circumstances, be fixed at 40 % of the quota volume;
Whereas the initial shares of the Member States may not be used up at the same rate; whereas, in order to take this into account and avoid any break in continuity, any Member State which has used up almost all its initial share should draw a further share from the reserve; whereas this should be done by each Member State each time one of its additional shares is almost used up, and so on as many times as the reserve allows; whereas the initial and additional shares must be valid until the end of the quota period; whereas this form of administration requires close collaboration between the Member States and the Commission, and the latter must be in a position in particular to monitor the extent to which the quota volume has been used up and inform the Member States thereof;
Whereas, if at a given date in the quota period a Member State has a considerable quantity of the initial share left over, it is essential that it should return a significant proportion thereof to the reserve to prevent a part of the Community quota remaining unused in one Member State when it could be used in others;
Whereas, since the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are united within and jointly represented by the Benelux Economic Union, all transactions concerning the administration of the quota shares allocated to that economic union may be carried out by any one of its members,