Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 612/2013 of 25 June 2013 on the operation of the register of economic operators and tax warehouses, related statistics and reporting pursuant to Council Regulation (EU) No 389/2012 on administrative cooperation in the field of excise duties

Article 1

Messages exchanged by means of the computerised system relating to the national and central registers

Those messages shall be exchanged by means of the computerised system.

The messages referred to in paragraph 1 shall be exchanged for the following purposes:

(a) notification of modifications of national registers sent by the central excise liaison offices and the liaison departments to the Central Register;

(b) notification of modifications of the Central Register sent to national registers;

(c) requests made by central excise liaison offices and the liaison departments for details of modifications to the Central Register;

(d) requests made by central excise liaison offices and the liaison departments for statistical information extracted from the Central Register;

(e) forwarding by the Commission to the requesting Member States of statistical information extracted from the Central Register.

Article 2

Definitions

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:

(1) ‘record’ means an entry in a national register or the Central Register referred to in Article 19(4) of Regulation (EU) No 389/2012;

(2) ‘modification’ means the creation, update or invalidation of a record;

(3) ‘activation date’ means the date in a record set by the responsible Member State, from which date the record is available for use in electronic verification in all Member States and from which the extracted details thereof are available for consultation for economic operators.

Article 3

Forwarding of modifications to the Central Register by the central excise liaison offices and the liaison departments

Article 4

Maintenance of the Central Register and forwarding of modifications to national registers

Where the structure and content of the message referred to in paragraph 1 comply with Table 2 of Annex I, the following actions shall be carried out:

(a) the Commission shall register the modification in the Central Register without delay;

(b) a notification shall be sent to each Member State of which the central excise liaison office or liaison department is registered to receive notifications of modifications using the ‘Operations on the register of economic operators’ message set out in Table 2 of Annex I.

Article 5

Incorporation of modifications into national registers

Article 6

Consultation of the Central Register by economic operators

Where the unique excise number submitted corresponds to an excise number present in the extract of the Central Register the extracted details of the register shall be returned to the economic operator, who has made the request, in the following situations:

(a) if the unique excise number submitted corresponds to a record for an authorised warehouse keeper, a registered consignee, a registered consignor, a certified consignee, or a certified consignor, the extract shall contain any of the following: (i) the textual description of the operator type code (data group 2 e set out in Table 2 of Annex I); (ii) at least one excise product category code (data group 2.4 a in the ‘Operations on the register of economic operators’ message) or at least one excise product code (data group 2.5 a set out in Table 2 of Annex I); (iii) a combination of data groups 2.4 a and 2.5 a that is in conformance with the rules contained in the description set out in Table 2 of Annex I; (iv) information on the operator role code indicating whether a registered consignee or an authorised warehouse keeper is authorised under Article 16(4) of Council Directive (EU) 2020/262 (²) to have excise goods moved to a place of direct delivery (data group 2.3 set out in Table 2 of Annex I);

(b) if the unique excise number submitted corresponds to a record for a tax warehouse the extract shall indicate any of the following: (i) at least one excise product category code (data group 3.4 a set out in Table 2 of Annex I); (ii) at least one excise product code (data group 3.5 a set out in Table 2 of Annex I); (iii) a combination of data groups 3.4 a and 3.5 a that is in conformance with the rules contained in the description set out in Table 2 of Annex I;

(c) if the unique excise number submitted corresponds to a registered consignee or certified consignee or certified consignor that falls under points (h), (l) and (m) of Article 19(2) of Regulation (EU) No 389/2012, the extract shall, in addition to the data provided in point (a) of this paragraph, contain the following information: (i) the expiry date of the authorisation (data group 4 c set out in Table 2 of Annex I); (ii) whether the authorisation may be used for more than one movement (data group 4 d in Table 2 of Annex I); (iii) at least one set of temporary authorisation details (data group 4.3 set out in Table 2 of Annex I).

Article 7

Statistical information and reports

The statistical information to be extracted by the Commission from the Central Register in accordance with Article 34(5) of Regulation (EU) No 389/2012 shall be the following:

(a) the number of active and inactive economic operators records;

(b) the number of pending expirations of authorisations, being the total number of authorisations that will expire in the following month or in the following quarter;

(c) the types of economic operators, the number of economic operators, by type, and the number of tax warehouses;

(d) the number of authorised economic operators by product and by product category;

(e) the number of modifications to excise authorisations.

On the basis of the statistical information referred to in the first subparagraph the Commission shall prepare a monthly report for the Member States.

Article 8

Time limit for processing notifications of national register modifications and common requests

Article 9

Availability

The Central Register and the national registers shall be available at all times.

Article 10

Limit to service obligations

The service obligations of the Commission and the Member States laid down in Articles 8 and 9 do not apply under the following duly justified circumstances:

(a) the Central Register or a national register is unavailable due to hardware or telecommunication failures;

(b) network problems occurs which are not under the direct control of the Commission or the Member State concerned;

(c) force majeure;

(d) scheduled maintenance notified at least forty-eight hours before the planned start of the maintenance period.

Article 11

Entry into force

This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Articles 8, 9 and 10 shall apply from 1 January 2015.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

ANNEX I

EXPLANATORY NOTES

1.The data elements of the electronic messages used for the purpose of the computerised system are structured in data groups and, where applicable, data subgroups. Details regarding the data elements and their use are presented in the tables of this Annex, in which:

(a) column A provides the numeric code (number) attributed to each data group and data subgroup; each subgroup follows the sequence number of the data (sub)group of which it forms part (for example: where the data group number is 1, one data subgroup of this group is 1.1 and one data subgroup of this subgroup is 1.1.1);

(b) column B provides the alphabetic code (letter) attributed to each data element in a data (sub)group;

(c) column C identifies the data (sub)group or data element;

(d) column D provides each data (sub)group or data element with a value indicating whether the insertion of the corresponding data is: (i) R’ (Required), meaning that the data must be provided. When a data (sub)group is ‘O’ (Optional) or ‘C’ (Conditional), data elements within that group can still be ‘R’ (Required) when the competent authorities of the Member State have decided that the data in this (sub)group must be completed or when the condition applies; (ii) ‘O’ (Optional), meaning that the insertion of the data is optional for the person submitting the message (the consignor or consignee) except where a Member State has stipulated that the data are required in accordance with the option provided for in column E for some of the optional data (sub)groups or data elements; (iii) ‘C’ (Conditional), meaning that the use of the data (sub)group or data element depends on other data (sub)groups or data elements in the same message; (iv) ‘D’ (Dependent), meaning that the use of the data (sub)group or data element depends on a condition which cannot be checked by the computerised system, as provided for in columns E and F;

(e) column E provides the condition(s) for data whose insertion is conditional, specifies the use of the optional and dependent data where applicable and indicates which data must be provided by the competent authorities;

(f) column F provides explanations, where necessary, concerning the completion of the message;

(g) column G provides: (i) for some data (sub)groups a number followed by the character ‘x’ indicating how many times the data (sub)group can be repeated in the message (default = 1); (ii) for each data element, except for data elements indicating the time or the date or both, the characteristics identifying the data type and the data length. The codes for the data types are as follows: — a alphabetic; — n numeric; — an alphanumeric. The number following the code provides the admissible data length for the data element concerned. The optional two dots before the length indicator mean that the data have no fixed length, but can have up to a number of digits, as specified by the length indicator. A comma in the data length means that the data can hold decimals, the digit before the comma provides the total length of the attribute, and the digit after the comma provides the maximum number of digits after the decimal point; (iii) for data elements indicating the time or the date or both, the mention ‘date’, ‘time’ or ‘dateTime’, meaning that the date, the time or the date and time must be given using the ISO 8601 standard for representation of dates and time.

2.The following abbreviations are used in the tables of this Annex:

(a) e-AD: electronic administrative document;

(b) e-SAD: electronic simplified administrative document;

(c) ARC: administrative reference code;

(d) SEED: System for Exchange of Excise Data (the electronic database referred to in Article 19(1) of Regulation (EU) No 389/2012;

(e) CN Code: Combined Nomenclature Code.

3.The following definitions are used in the tables of this Annex:

(a) ‘Authorisation Begin Date’ means the date from which an economic operator is authorised by the responsible Member State to produce, store, send or receive excise goods within the meaning of Chapter IV and Section 2 of Chapter V, of Directive (EU) 2020/262;

(b) ‘Authorisation End Date’ means the date from which an economic operator is no longer authorised by the responsible Member State;

(c) ‘Validity Begin Date’ means the date from which the premises of an economic operator have been declared by the responsible Member State to be valid as a location to produce, send or receive excise goods within the meaning of Chapter IV and Section 2 of Chapter V, of Directive (EU) 2020/262;

(d) ‘Validity End Date’ means the date from which the premises of an economic operator cease to be valid.