PURPOSE: to establish a common regime for certain
aspects of excise duties (recast).
PROPOSED ACT: Council Directive.
ROLE OF THE
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the Council adopts the act after consulting
the European Parliament but without being obliged to follow its
opinion.
BACKGROUND: Council Directive 2008/118/EC sets out
general arrangements for goods subject to excise duty, with
particular emphasis on the production, storage and movement of
excise goods between Member States.
The Commission's evaluation of the Directive under the
REFIT programme showed general satisfaction with the functioning of
the Excise Movement and Control System (EMCS). However, certain
areas of improvement were identified. The main areas
highlighted concerned the improvement of the alignment between
excise and customs procedures and the partial or full automation of
intra-EU movements of excise goods that have been released for
consumption.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT: with the proposed simplifications,
mainly via automation or harmonisation of procedures, the following
yearly benefits are expected: (i) EUR 14.55 million of
administrative cost savings for Member States; (ii) EUR 32.27
million of regulatory cost savings for economic
operators.
The preferred options incur some regulatory costs,
mostly due to the evolutions of IT systems and to the registration
of economic operators for to-be-automated procedures: (i) EUR 17.63
million initial one-off costs and EUR 3.89 million yearly recurrent
costs for Member States; (ii) EUR 14.5 million initial one-off
costs and EUR 4.35 million yearly recurrent costs economic
operators.
CONTENT: the proposal for recasting Council Directive
2008/118/EC includes the following amendments:
Excise and customs
interaction:
- as regards exports, the
proposal introduces : (i) a new obligation for the declarant
to provide the competent authorities with the unique administrative
reference number (ARC) when the export declaration is lodged; (ii)
a new obligation for the competent authorities to ensure
consistency between the electronic administrative document and the
customs declaration; (iii) a provision allowing the external
transit procedure to take over monitoring and supervision from the
computerised system;
- as regards imports, a
new obligation is imposed on the declarant to provide the unique
excise number of the consignor and consignee to the competent
authorities in the Member State of importation responsible for
release for free circulation. This should enable the competent
authorities to ensure that that the evidence for claims for
exemption from paying excise duty on import are consistent with the
details submitted via the computerised system, when moving excise
goods from a place of importation under excise duty.
Intra-EU movements of excise goods released for
consumption: the procedures applied
to intra-EU movements of excise goods released for consumption to
be delivered for commercial purposes would be computerised. In
order to computerise procedures applied to intra-EU movements of
excise goods released for consumption that are to be delivered for
commercial purposes and in order to do this by extending the
existing computerised system the following changes will be made to
the Directive:
- determining when excise duty on the goods is
chargeable and who is liable to pay the excise duty;
- creating two new economic operator roles, the
certified consignor and the certified consignee, to allow for the
identification in the computerised system of the economic operators
using these procedures;
- aligning the arrangements for guarantees with those
under duty suspension;
- allowing authorised warehouse keepers and registered
consignors to act as a certified consignors. Authorised
warehousekeepers and the registered consignees should be able to
act as a certified consignee;
- determining the general rules governing the automated
procedure;
- replacing the reference to the paper document
accompanying the excise goods released for consumption in one
Member State and which are moved to another Member State by a
reference to the new electronic simplified administrative
accompanying document.
Distance Selling: the
proposal introduces the choice for the consignor to use a tax
representative to comply with the requirements of the Member State
where the consignor, who carries out an independent economic
activity, wants to move excise goods released for consumption in
one Member State to a person not carrying out any independent
economic activity in another Member State. The possibility to
require the use of a tax representative will be
deleted.
Other amendments: this proposal will lead to
uniform application and transparency and simplification in the
following exceptional situations: (i) a common solution for partial
natural losses (e.g. evaporation) incurred during a movement; (ii)
automation of the exemption certificate and its treatment for
movements of excise goods to recipients exempt from payment of
excise duty; (iii) a common guarantee exemption for energy products
moving through pipelines.