This Regulation lays down the ways in which the administrative authorities responsible for implementation of the legislation on customs and agricultural matters in the Member States shall cooperate with each other and with the Commission in order to ensure compliance with that legislation within the framework of a Community system.
Council Regulation (EC) No 515/97 of 13 March 1997 on mutual assistance between the administrative authorities of the Member States and cooperation between the latter and the Commission to ensure the correct application of the law on customs and agricultural matters
Council Regulation (EC) No 515/97 of 13 March 1997 on mutual assistance between the administrative authorities of the Member States and cooperation between the latter and the Commission to ensure the correct application of the law on customs and agricultural matters
Article 1
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2.
The provisions of this Regulation shall not apply where they overlap with the specific provisions of other legislation on mutual assistance between Member States' administrative authorities and cooperation between the latter and the Commission for the application of customs or agricultural legislation.
Article 2
1.
For the purposes of this Regulation:
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‘customs legislation’ means customs legislation as defined in point 2 of Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council(1),
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‘agricultural legislation’ means the body of provisions adopted under the common agricultural policy and the special rules adopted with regard to goods resulting from the processing of agricultural products,
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‘applicant authority’ means the competent authority of a Member State which makes a request for assistance,
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‘requested authority’ means the competent authority of a Member State to which a request for assistance is made,
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‘administrative enquiry’ means all controls, checks and other action taken by the staff of the administrative authorities specified in Article 1 (1) in the performance of their duties with a view to ensuring proper application of customs and agricultural legislation and, where necessary, checking the irregular nature of operations which appear to breach that legislation, except action taken at the request of or under a direct mandate from a judicial authority; the expression ‘administrative enquiry’ also covers the Community missions referred to in Article 20,
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‘personal data’ means all information relating to an identified or identifiable individual; an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, psychological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity,
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‘operational analysis’ means analysis of operations which constitute, or appear to constitute, breaches of customs or agricultural legislation, involving the following stages in turn:
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the collection of information, including personal data;
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evaluation of the reliability of the information source and the information itself;
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research, methodical presentation and interpretation of links between these items of information or between them and other significant data;
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the formulation of observations, hypotheses or recommendations directly usable as risk information by the competent authorities and by the Commission to prevent and detect other operations in breach of customs and agricultural legislation and/or to identify with precision the person or businesses implicated in such operations,
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‘strategic analysis’ means research and presentation of the general trends in breaches of customs and agricultural legislation through an evaluation of the threat, scale and impact of certain types of operation in breach of customs and agricultural legislation, with a view to subsequently setting priorities, gaining a better picture of the phenomenon or threat, reorienting action to prevent and detect fraud and reviewing departmental organisation. Only data from which identifying factors have been removed may be used for strategic analysis,
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‘regular automatic exchange’ means the systematic communication of predefined information, without prior request, at pre-established regular intervals,
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‘occasional automatic exchange’ means the systematic communication of predefined information, without prior request, as and when that information becomes available,
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‘customs territory of the Union’ means the customs territory of the Union as defined in Article 4 of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013,
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‘carriers’ means the persons within the meaning of point 40 of Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013.
2.
Each Member State shall communicate to the other Member States and the Commission a list of the competent authorities it has appointed for the purposes of applying this Regulation.
For the purposes of this Regulation ‘competent authorities’ means the authorities appointed in accordance with the preceding subparagraph.
Article 2a
Without prejudice to other provisions of this Regulation, and in pursuit of the objectives thereof, in particular where no customs declaration or simplified declaration is presented or where it is incomplete or where there is a reason to believe that the data contained therein are false, the Commission or the competent authorities of each Member State may exchange with the competent authority of any other Member State or the Commission the following data:
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business name;
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trading name;
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address of the business;
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VAT identification number of the business;
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excise duties identification number(2);
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information as to whether the VAT identification number and/or the excise duties identification number is in use;
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names of the managers, directors and, if available, principal shareholders of the business;
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number and date of issue of the invoice; and
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amount invoiced.
This Article shall apply only to movements of goods as described in the first indent of Article 2(1).
Article 3
Where national authorities decide, in response to a request for administrative assistance or a communication based on this Regulation, to take action involving measures which may be implemented only with the authorization or at the demand of a judicial authority:
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any information thus obtained concerning the application of customs and agricultural legislation, or at least
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that part of the file required to put a stop to a fraudulent practice,
shall be communicated as part of the administrative cooperation provided for by this Regulation.
However, any such communication must have the prior authorization of the judicial authority if the necessity of such authorization derives from national law.