Article 4

Within two working days of the closing date for the submission of licence applications, the Member States shall notify the Commission, by telex or fax and in accordance with Annex I to this Regulation, of the quantities covered by import licence applications, broken down by eight-digit CN code and country of origin, the number of the licence applied for and the name and address of the applicant.

Such notification shall also be made where no application has been submitted in a Member State.

The above information must be notified separately from that relating to other import licence applications covering rice and in accordance with the same procedure.

Within 10 days of the closing date for notification, the Commission shall:

• decide to what extent applications may be accepted. Where the quantities applied for exceed those available in respect of the tranche in question, it shall set a single percentage reduction to be applied to those quantities,

• fix the quantities available under the following tranche.

If the reduction referred to in the first indent of paragraph 2 of this Article results in one or more quantities of less than 20 tonnes per application, the Member State shall allocate the total of these quantities by drawing lots among the importers concerned in 20-tonne lots and, where applicable, the remaining lot.