Commission Decision of 18 March 2008 granting certain parties an exemption from the extension to certain bicycle parts of the anti-dumping duty on bicycles originating in the People’s Republic of China imposed by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2474/93, last maintained and amended by Regulation (EC) No 1095/2005, and lifting the suspension of the payment of the anti-dumping duty extended to certain bicycle parts originating in the People’s Republic of China granted to certain parties pursuant to Commission Regulation (EC) No 88/97 (notified under document number C(2008) 1044) (2008/260/EC)

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,

Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 384/96 of 22 December 1995 on protection against dumped imports from countries not members of the European Community^f1 (the ‘basic Regulation’),

Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 71/97^f2 (the ‘extending Regulation’), extending the definitive anti-dumping duty imposed by Regulation (EEC) No 2474/93^f3 on bicycles originating in the People’s Republic of China to imports of certain bicycle parts from the People’s Republic of China, and levying the extended duty on such imports registered under Regulation (EC) No 703/96,

Having regard to Commission Regulation (EC) No 88/97^f4 (the ‘exemption Regulation’) on the authorisation of the exemption of imports of certain bicycle parts originating in the People’s Republic of China from the extension by Council Regulation (EC) No 71/97 of the anti-dumping duty imposed by Council Regulation (EEC) No 2474/93, and in particular Article 7 thereof,

After consulting the Advisory Committee,

Whereas:

After the entry into force of the exemption Regulation, a number of bicycle assemblers submitted requests pursuant to Article 3 of that Regulation for exemption from the anti-dumping duty as extended to imports of certain bicycle parts from the People’s Republic of China by Regulation (EC) No 71/97 (the ‘extended anti-dumping duty’). The Commission has published in the Official Journal successive lists of bicycle assemblers^f5 for which the payment of the extended anti-dumping duty in respect of their imports of essential bicycle parts declared for free circulation was suspended pursuant to Article 5(1) of the exemption Regulation.

Following the last publication of the list of parties under examination^f6, a period of examination has been selected. Due to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania it was decided to determine an examination period from 1 January 2006 until 30 June 2007 so that in the same procedure also requests for exemptions submitted by Bulgarian and Romanian bicycle assemblers could be analysed. A questionnaire was sent to all parties under examination, requesting information on the assembly operations conducted during the relevant period of examination.

The facts as finally ascertained by the Commission show that for 22 of these applicants’ bicycle assembly operations, the value of the parts originating in the People’s Republic of China which were used in their assembly operations was lower than 60 % of the total value of the parts used in these assembly operations, and they, therefore, fall outside the scope of Article 13(2) of the basic Regulation.

For this reason, and in accordance with Article 7(1) of the exemption Regulation, the parties listed in the above table should be exempted from the extended anti-dumping duty.

In accordance with Article 7(2) of the exemption Regulation, the exemption of the parties listed in table 1 from the extended anti-dumping duty should take effect as from the date of receipt of their requests. In addition, their customs debt in respect of the extended anti-dumping duty is to be considered void as from the date of receipt of their requests for exemption.

• Leader-96 Ltd. transferred its registered office from 3 Mostova Str., 4002 Plovdiv, Bulgaria to 19 Sedianka Str., 4003 Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

It has been established that this change in the address of the registered office did not affect the assembly operation with regard to the stipulations of the exemption Regulation and therefore the Commission does not consider that this change should affect the exemption from the extended anti-dumping duty.

Two parties withdrew their request for exemption and informed the Commission accordingly.

Another party went bankrupt and consequently ceased the assembly activities.

Since the parties listed in table 2 failed to meet the criteria for exemption set by Article 6(2) of the exemption Regulation, the Commission has to reject their requests for exemptions, in accordance with Article 7(3) of the Regulation. In the light of this, the suspension of the payment of the extended anti-dumping duty referred to in Article 5 of the exemption Regulation must be lifted and the extended anti-dumping duty must be collected as from the date of receipt of the requests submitted by these parties.

With regard to these parties, it should be noted that their requests did not meet the admissibility criteria set out in Article 4(1) of the exemption Regulation as all these applicants use essential bicycle parts for the production or assembly of bicycles in quantities below 300 units per type on a monthly basis.

These parties were informed accordingly and were given an opportunity to comment. For two parties no comments were received, the remaining two parties withdrew their request. As a consequence, no suspension was granted to these parties.

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION: