Article 17
1. The competent authorities of the Member States shall notify the Commission of the quantities covered by the requests for import authorisations which they have received. 2. The Commission shall notify its confirmation that the requested quantities are available for importation in the chronological order in which the notifications of the Member States have been received (‘first come, first served’ basis). 3. Where there is reason to believe that anticipated requests may exceed the quantitative limits, the Commission may, in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 30(3), divide the quantitative limits into tranches or fix maximum amounts per allocation. The Commission may, in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 30(3), reserve a proportion of a specific quantitative limit for requests supported by evidence of past import performance. 4. The notifications referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall be communicated electronically within the integrated network set up for this purpose, unless for imperative technical reasons it is necessary to use other means of communication temporarily. 5. The competent authorities shall notify the Commission immediately after being informed of any quantity that is not used during the validity of the import authorisation. Such unused quantities shall automatically be transferred into the remaining quantities of the total Union quantitative limit. 6. The Commission may, in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 30(3), take any measure necessary to implement this Article.