Pursuant to Article 27(1)(a) of Directive 92/83/EEC, Member States are required to exempt from excise duty alcohol which has been completely denatured in accordance with the requirements of any Member State, provided that such requirements have been duly notified and accepted in accordance with the conditions laid down in paragraphs 3 and 4 of that Article.

Commission Regulation (EC) No 3199/93 of 22 November 1993 on the mutual recognition of procedures for the complete denaturing of alcohol for the purposes of exemption from excise duty provides that the denaturants which are employed in each Member State for the purposes of completely denaturing alcohol in accordance with Article 27(1)(a) of Directive 92/83/EEC are to be described in the Annex to that Regulation.

The proliferation of denaturing procedures adds complexity to the denaturing system, weakens the ability for effective administration of the system, and offers more opportunities for fraud.

In 2008, Member States provided wide support for a project group operating under Decision No 1482/2007/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2007 establishing a Community programme to improve the operation of taxation systems in the internal market (Fiscalis 2013) and repealing Decision No 2235/2002/EC, involving a large number of Customs Chemical Laboratories and the Joint Research Centre. The object of the project was to explore the possibility of applying common denaturing procedures (euro-denaturants) for the purposes of completely denaturing alcohol.

The project group suggested, in its final report published in June 2011 that a denaturing procedure consisting of 3 litres of isopropyl alcohol (IPA), 3 litres of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and of 1 gram of denatonium benzoate per hectolitre of absolute alcohol, could be considered for adoption as a common denaturing procedure for the purposes of completely denaturing alcohol. One main advantage of that common procedure is that it is likely to replace numerous procedures individual to the various Member States. That procedure should therefore be employed as a procedure common to all Member States for the purposes of completely denaturing alcohol in order to prevent evasion, avoidance and abuse in this area.

Subsequently, each Member State has communicated to the Commission a new list of requirements in accordance with Article 27(3) of Directive 92/83/EEC. Each of those lists referred to the common denaturing procedure and, in some cases, to other existing procedures. As regards existing procedures, certain Member States expressed the wish to maintain them for a transitional period or for a non-specified period of time due to specific technical requirements.

The Commission transmitted all the communications received to the other Member States on 28 June 2012.

None of the Member States objected to the proposed common denaturing procedure.

As regards existing procedures, no new elements have been raised indicating the existence of risk of evasion, avoidance and abuse.

In addition to the common denaturing procedure for the purposes of completely denaturing alcohol, patenting and related cost issues have led Austria to adopt an alternative procedure which is already employed by other Member States as a denaturing procedure.

In order to allow industry adequate time to exhaust stocks of denaturants and denatured products covered so far by Regulation (EC) No 3199/93, but which will no longer be covered once this Regulation becomes applicable, the application of this Regulation as regards Section I of this Annex should be deferred.

Regulation (EC) No 3199/93 should therefore be amended accordingly.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee on Excise Duties,