Introductory text

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

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

Having regard to Council Regulation (EU) No 389/2012 of 2 May 2012 on administrative cooperation in the field of excise duties and repealing Regulation (EC) No 2073/2004^f1, and in particular Article 9(2), Article 15(5) and Article 16(3) thereof,

Whereas:

In accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/323^f2, under certain conditions the competent authorities of a Member State may refuse to provide information regarding goods under excise duty suspension which has been requested by another competent authority on the grounds of legally justified reasons.

A competent authority which has forwarded information necessary to ensure the correct application of the legislation on excise duties to another authority, may request that the other competent authority provide feedback on the follow-up action it has taken on the basis of the information.

Currently those refusals are to be forwarded and feedback is to be requested and provided using the CCN secure mail system.

In order to accelerate and to improve the exchange of information between the Member States, all information should be stored in a central place. Accordingly, the competent authorities should use the computerised system to forward refusals and to request and provide feedback instead of using the CCN secure mail system.

For the purposes of requests for assistance competent authorities should be able to link multiple messages that relate to the same movement of goods or the same trader, where the messages are exchanged in separate requests. For this purpose a new data item ‘National Case Reference Identifier’ should be introduced in the documents for requests for assistance and movement verification requests messages.

In order to improve the integrity of the information contained in numeric data items, some data elements should be prevented from being filled in by stakeholders with a zero value. For this purpose the Tables 2, 3, 7, 10, 11 and 12 in Annex I to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/323 should be amended.

The values in several code lists in Annex II to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/323 should be updated in order to link excise and customs procedures and to improve the quality of information provided by economic operators.

In order to enable economic operators to provide extensive and accurate information while leaving enough space for the translation of the information, the size of the free text fields in administrative cooperation messages should be increased. For this purpose the Tables 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 in Annex I to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/323 should be amended.

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/323 should therefore be amended accordingly.

In order to align the application date of this Regulation with the application date for a new version of the computerised system established by Decision No 1152/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council^f3 and to allow the Commission and the Member States adequate time to prepare for the changes resulting from this Regulation, it should apply from 15 February 2018.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee on Excise Duty,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: