Article 2 Special provisions for system A1

Exporters shall apply to the competent bodies in the Member States for a licence under system A1 in order to obtain a refund at the rate applicable on the date of the licence application.

The Member States shall inform the Commission, in accordance with Article 7(3), of the quantities for which licence applications have been submitted, broken down by application submission day, excluding any quantities covered by applications rejected under Article 5(4).

The Commission shall check, for each application submission day in turn, whether the total quantities applied for in each product category exceed the quantity referred to in Article 1(2):

• less the quantities for which A1 licences have been issued or are in the process of being issued during the current issuing period,

• plus any quantities covered by applications withdrawn under paragraph 5,

• plus any quantities for which licences have been issued but not used,

• plus any quantities not used within the tolerance provided for in Article 8(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1291/2000.

If they do, the Commission shall either determine for what percentage of the quantities licences may be issued or reject the applications.

Export licences shall be issued on the fifth working day following the day on which the application is submitted, provided that neither of the measures referred to in the second subparagraph of paragraph 3 has been taken in the meantime.

Where a percentage is set under the second subparagraph of paragraph 3, applications may be withdrawn within 10 working days of the date of publication of that percentage. Where applications are withdrawn, the security shall be released. The security shall also be released where applications are rejected.

Where a licence is issued before the application is withdrawn, that licence shall be returned for cancellation to the competent agency referred to in Article 7(1) at the same time as notification is given that the application concerned is withdrawn.