Introductory text

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Council Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 of 23 July 1987 on the tariff and statistical nomenclature and on the Common Customs Tariff^f1, and in particular Article 9 thereof,

Whereas:

Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 established the Combined Nomenclature (CN) to meet the requirements of the Common Customs Tariff, the external trade statistics of the Union, and other Union policies concerning the imports or exports of goods.

Council Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 of 16 November 2009 setting up a Community system of reliefs from customs duty^f2 applies to cases where taxation is not justified.

In certain circumstances, taking into account the special nature of some of the movements of goods mentioned in Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009, it seems appropriate to reduce the administrative burden when declaring such movements, by assigning them a specific CN code. It is the case, in particular, when the classification of each type of goods in a movement for the purpose of drawing up the customs declaration would entail a workload and expense disproportionate to the interests at stake.

Commission Regulation (EU) No 113/2010 οf 9 February 2010 implementing Regulation (EC) No 471/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics relating to external trade with non-member countries, as regards trade coverage, definition of the data, compilation of statistics on trade by business characteristics and by invoicing currency, and specific goods or movements^f3 and Commission Regulation (EC) No 1982/2004 of 18 November 2004 implementing Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics relating to the trading of goods between Member States and repealing Commission Regulations (EC) No 1901/2000 and (EEC) No 3590/92^f4 allow the Member States to use a simplified coding system for certain goods in the extra-EU and intra-EU trade statistics.

Those regulations provide for specific goods codes to be used under special conditions. For the sake of transparency as well as for information purposes, such codes should be mentioned in the CN.

For these reasons, it is appropriate to insert Chapter 99 in the CN.

Annex I to Regulation (EEC) No 2658/87 should therefore be amended accordingly.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Customs Code Committee,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: