The European Parliament adopted, by 563 votes to 9 with 16 abstentions, legislative resolution amending the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics relating to external trade with non-member countries and repealing Council Regulation. The report had been tabled for consideration in plenary by Helmuth MARKOV (GUE/NGL, DE) on behalf of the Committee on International Trade.
The main amendments - adopted under the 1st reading of the codecision procedure - were as follows:
- a detailed list of "specific goods and movements" requiring specific provisions has been included in the scope of the regulation. This concerns industrial plants, vessels and aircraft, sea products, goods delivered to vessels and aircraft, staggered consignments, military goods, goods to or from offshore installations, spacecraft, electricity and gas and waste products. Updates to the list will be made through the regulatory procedure with scrutiny. For specific goods or movements, data sources other than the customs declaration may be used;
- a detailed list of "excluded goods and movements" has also been included in the scope of the regulation. This concerns monetary gold and means of payment which are legal tender, goods by virtue of the diplomatic or similar nature of their intended use, goods movements between the importing and exporting Member State and their national armed forces stationed abroad as well as certain goods acquired and disposed of by foreign armed forces, particular goods which are not the subject of a commercial transaction, movements of satellite launchers before their launching, goods for and after repair, goods for or following temporary use, goods used as carriers of customised information and downloaded information, goods declared orally to customs authorities which are either of a commercial nature, provided that their value does not exceed the statistical threshold of EUR 1 000 or 1 000 kilograms, or of a non commercial nature. Measures to update the list may be made through the regulatory procedure with scrutiny;
- Member States may continue to use other data sources for the compilation of national statistics other than those defined in the text until a mechanism for mutual exchange of the relevant data by electronic means is in place. However, the compilation of Community external trade statistics should not be based on those other data sources;
- the wording on the comitology procedure has been tightened up throughout the regulation, its scope limited and definitions refined;
- the legislation will apply from 1 January 2010 (rather than 1 January 2009.)