Brussels, 11/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - During its joint discussion next Tuesday on a series of special reports from the Court of Auditors, the European Parliament will above all discuss a report on the sureties and guarantees foreseen by the Community customs code for protecting the collection of traditional own resources. The Court's report, which dates back to 1999, notes that the traditional own resources included in the Community's accounts for 1998 amounted to ECU 14,000 million. European Parliament rapporteur Salvador Garriga Polledo (EPP, Spain) notes that the collection of customs duties to fuel the Community budget is normally assured by various provisions incorporated into the Community customs regulation providing sureties and guarantees but that, according to the Court's report, there are no reliable data on the volume of guarantees in effect, granted or cleared. Such data exists in the accounting systems of Member State customs services but are not the subject of measures allowing their aggregation and their knowledge at Community level, states Mr Garriga Polledo, who notes that this situation, well-known in the customs field, confirms that the customs administrations are still unable to work in a truly common framework and that the European Commission imperfectly assumes its responsibilities in this area. The rapporteur stresses that the question of how the customs services work is all the more important as the European Council of Berlin in March 1999 had established that the amount deducted by the Member States for the cost of collecting the customs duties (and therefore taken from the only real own resource) would climb from 10 to 25% as of 2001.
Under these conditions, Mr Garriga Polledo considers it essential that the customs services of Member States should each year carry out a general inspection comprising examination of the operator's accounting and commercial documents and an effective exchange of information with the other national authorities concerned, so that the sureties and guarantees are fixed at the level required: the Commission must take "useful initiatives along these lines", he states. In the report from the Court of Auditors, Mr Garriga Polledo above all notes the passages that refer to the common and Community transit regime where the Court points out that provisions on examining the amount of the global guarantee required from operators were "badly applied". For example: In one Member State, the Court noted that examination of guarantees had not been carried out for five years. In five Member States, the frequency and the method applied to such examinations were not conform to Community regulation. In two Member States, the customs authorities did not have a central transit office. In addition, the Court notes a transit operation in which the unlawful introduction of cigarettes into the Community had given rise to a demand for the payment of customs duties representing around ECU 2.8 million. Mr Garriga Polledo noted for his part that a large number of cigarette exports outside the Community territory are carried out under cover of the Community or common transit regime and that, in many cases, these regular exports fuel circuits for the reintroduction of cigarettes onto the Community territory under fraudulent conditions. Under these circumstances, the rapporteur calls on the Commission to study the possibility of requiring operators to produce a full dossier including all necessary information for precise identification of the owners of the goods in question.