ANNEX IVSupplementary provisions
ANNEX IV CONDITIONS GOVERNING THE RELEASE FOR FREE CIRCULATION IN THE UNION OF TIMBER AND DERIVED PRODUCTS EXPORTED FROM CAMEROON AND ACCOMPANIED BY A FLEGT LICENCE I. Principles In order to guarantee the efficient operation of the Cameroon FLEGT licensing scheme, the Member States of the Union must verify that the timber and derived products sent from Cameroon and entered for release for free circulation in the Union are accompanied by a FLEGT licence in accordance with the rules (see Articles 6 and 10). The existence and regularity of the FLEGT licence are ascertained following documentary verification by the competent authorities that the Member States will have designated. The timber and derived products within a shipment will not be released for free circulation until the customs authorities have been informed of the existence and regularity of the FLEGT licence corresponding to the shipment. Before the FLEGT licensing scheme is launched, the Union will notify Cameroon of the list of competent authorities designated by each of the Member States and also the procedure that will be used by those competent authorities. II. Deadlines The FLEGT licence scheme establishes a set of requirements and procedures designed to verify that the timber and derived products shipped to the Union are produced legally. The establishment of this scheme must not be at the expense of the competitiveness of the timber and derived products originating from Cameroon. The deadlines for release for free circulation within the Union must in particular be observed, in order to prevent any distortion against timber and derived products originating from a country that has not established a FLEGT licence scheme. This concern will be taken into account by the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) and has been explicitly included in: — the ‘Terms of Reference for the Independent System Audit (ISA)’ (Annex VI, Section II.4), — the ‘Evaluation criteria for the system established in the Union to accept FLEGT licences’ (Annex VIII, Section VI). III. Procedure The importer sends the licence accompanying a shipment to the competent authorities of the Member State in which the customs declaration for the purposes of release of the shipment for free circulation is made. The importer is actively encouraged to send the licence before the shipment arrives in the Union, in order to allow its prior processing by the Union authorities. The competent authorities examine the licence from five aspects (documentary control): — conformity to the specimen or to the technical specifications of the licence for Cameroon, which the European Commission transmitted earlier to the competent authorities, — presence of an original or of a replacement document bearing the word ‘Duplicate’, issued by the licensing authority, — the fact that the examination date is earlier than the expiry date appearing on the licence, — absence of erasures and alterations, unless they have been authenticated by the licensing authority, — absence of extension of the validity of the licence, unless the extension was issued by the licensing authority. Following the examination, the competent authorities inform the customs authorities, in accordance with the applicable national procedures, of the existence, regularity and number of the licence. This information is required by the customs authorities processing the customs declaration for release for free circulation. The importer mentions the licence number on this declaration. During examination of the licence, the competent authorities may request further information from the Cameroon issuing authorities, in order to confirm the existence and regularity of the licence. They may also decide to undertake controls to determine whether the shipment itself conforms to the information in the licence (this is termed a ‘physical inspection’). If a physical inspection is decided upon, the authorities of the Member State endeavour to undertake their controls at the same time and in the same place, so that they only need to inspect the shipment once. If a physical inspection is undertaken, the volume and net weight of the shipment are deemed to conform to the information in the licence where the volume or net weight of the timber and derived products in the shipment does not vary by more than 10 % from the volume or net weight stated in the corresponding licence. IV. Summary flowchart The flowchart below shows the procedure for release for free circulation in the Union of timber and derived products exported from Cameroon and accompanied by a FLEGT licence.