
Article 1 
Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 is hereby amended as follows:

1.. in Article 3, paragraph 4 shall be replaced by the following:
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4. The Commission may adopt different or specific rules applying to specific goods or movements. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
2.. in Article 6, paragraph 2 shall be replaced by the following:
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2. The reference period may be adapted by the Commission to take into account the linkage with value added tax (VAT) and customs obligations. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
3.. in Article 7, paragraph 1 shall be replaced by the following:
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1. The parties responsible for providing the information for the Intrastat system shall be:
(a) the taxable person as defined in Title III of Council Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006 on the common system of value added tax, in the Member State of dispatch, who:
((i)) has concluded the contract, with the exception of transport contracts, giving rise to the dispatch of goods or, failing that;
((ii)) dispatches or provides for the dispatch of the goods or, failing that;
((iii)) is in possession of the goods which are the subject of the dispatch;or its tax representative in accordance with Article 204 of Directive 2006/112/EC; and
(b) the taxable person as defined in Title III of Directive 2006/112/EC, in the Member State of arrival, who:
((i)) has concluded the contract, with the exception of transport contracts, giving rise to the delivery of goods or, failing that;
((ii)) takes delivery or provides for delivery of the goods or, failing that;
((iii)) is in possession of the goods which are the subject of the delivery;or its tax representative in accordance with Article 204 of Directive 2006/112/EC.';
4.. in Article 8(2), point (a) shall be replaced by the following:
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((a)) at least once a month, with the lists of taxable persons who have declared that, during the period in question, they have supplied goods to other Member States or acquired goods from other Member States. The lists shall show the total values of the goods declared by each taxable person for fiscal purposes;'
5.. Article 9(1) shall be amended as follows:

((a)) point (a) of the first subparagraph shall be replaced by the following:
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((a)) the individual identification number allocated to the party responsible for providing information in accordance with Article 214 of Directive 2006/112/EC;'
((b)) the second subparagraph shall be replaced by the following:
'Definitions of the statistical data referred to in points (e) to (h) are given in the Annex. Where necessary, the Commission shall determine the arrangements for the collection of that information, particularly the codes to be employed. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
6.. Article 10 shall be amended as follows:

((a)) paragraph 3 shall be replaced by the following:
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3. The thresholds below which parties are exempted from providing any Intrastat information shall be set at a level that ensures that the value of at least 97 % of the total dispatches and at least 95 % of the total arrivals of the relevant Member State's taxable persons is covered.The Commission shall adapt those Intrastat coverage rates to technical and economic developments, whenever it is possible to reduce them while maintaining statistics which meet the quality indicators and standards in force. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
((b)) in paragraph 4, the second subparagraph shall be replaced by the following:
'The Commission shall specify the conditions for defining those thresholds. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
((c)) paragraph 5 shall be replaced by the following:
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5. Member States may under certain conditions, which meet quality requirements, simplify the information to be provided for small individual transactions. The conditions shall be defined by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
7.. Article 11 shall be replaced by the following:
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Article 11 
Only where the party or parties that have provided information so request shall the national authorities decide whether statistical results which may make it possible to identify the said provider(s) are to be disseminated or are to be amended in such a way that their dissemination does not prejudice statistical confidentiality.';
8.. Article 12 shall be amended as follows:

((a)) in paragraph 1, point (a) shall be replaced by the following:
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((a)) 40 calendar days after the end of the reference month for the aggregated data to be defined by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
((b)) in paragraph 2, the following sentences shall be added:
'The results of the estimates shall comply with criteria defined by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
((c)) the following paragraph shall be added:
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4. Member States shall transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) annual statistics on trade by business characteristics, namely economic activity carried out by the enterprise according to the section or two-digit level of the common statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE), as established by Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and size-class measured in terms of number of employees.Those statistics shall be compiled by linking data on business characteristics recorded according to Regulation (EC) No 177/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 February 2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes with the statistics referred to in Article 3 of this Regulation.Implementing provisions for compiling those statistics shall be determined by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
(9). Article 13 is replaced by the following:
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Article 13 

1. For the purposes of this Regulation, the following quality criteria shall apply to the statistics to be transmitted:
(a) “relevance”, which refers to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users;
(b) “accuracy”, which refers to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values;
(c) “timeliness”, which refers to the period between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes;
(d) “punctuality”, which refers to the delay between the date of release of the data and the target date (the date by which the data should have been delivered);
(e) “accessibility” and “clarity”, which refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data;
(f) “comparability”, which refers to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures where statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time;
(g) “coherence”, which refers to the adequacy of the data to be reliably combined in different ways and for various uses.
2. Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with an annual report on the quality of the statistics transmitted.
3. In applying the quality criteria laid down in paragraph 1 to the statistics covered by this Regulation, the modalities and structure of the quality reports shall be defined in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 14(2).The Commission (Eurostat) shall assess the quality of the statistics transmitted.
4. The Commission shall determine any measures necessary to ensure the quality of the statistics transmitted according to the quality criteria. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia, by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 14(3).';
(10). in Article 14, paragraph 3 shall be replaced by the following:
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3. Where reference is made to this paragraph, Article 5a(1) to (4), and Article 7 of Decision 1999/468/EC shall apply, having regard to the provisions of Article 8 thereof.';
(11). in the Annex, Section 3, point (a) shall be replaced by the following:
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((a)) the taxable amount, which is the value to be determined for taxation purposes in accordance with Directive 2006/112/EC;'.
Article 2 
This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
It shall apply from 1 January 2009.
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.Done at Strasbourg, 11 March 2009.
For the European Parliament
The President
H.-G. PÖTTERING
For the Council
The President
A. VONDRA