By proposal of Günther H. Oettinger, the Commissioner for the Budget, the European Commission decided on Monday 24 September to send the United Kingdom a reasoned opinion on the grounds that the country has not made certain customs duties available to the EU budget, as required under EU law (see EUROPE 11977).
This is the second stage of the infringement procedure launched by the Commission in March 2018 when importers in the United Kingdom were found to have eluded a large amount of customs duties by using fictitious or false invoices and incorrect customs value declarations at importation.
“Further Commission inspections confirmed the very large scale of this undervaluation fraud scheme operating through British ports between 2011 and 2017”, the Commission explains. Although it was informed of the risks of fraud relating to the import of textiles and footwear from the People's Republic of China since 2007, and was asked to take appropriate risk control measures, the United Kingdom failed to take effective action to prevent fraud, the Commission stresses. According to its calculations, the infringement of EU legislation by the United Kingdom resulted in losses to the EU budget amounting to €2.7 billion.
The United Kingdom has also broken EU legislation on value-added tax, which is likely to have caused further losses to the EU budget. The UK now has two months to act, or the Commission may refer the matter before the Court of Justice of the EU. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)