Annex I to Commission Regulation (EC) No 684/20092 lays down the structure and content of electronic messages used for the purpose of movements of excise goods under suspension of excise duty, as well as the codes required for the completion of certain data items in those messages.

The computerised system established by Decision No 1152/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council3 for the purpose of movement of excise goods under suspension of excise duty does not have a standard way of referring to any electronic or paper attachments. This means that finding the link between an electronic administrative document and an attachment is not clear and has to be done manually, which is burdensome for tax authorities. In order to make the system more efficient, there is a need to provide for a common and automatic way of linking an electronic administrative document with attached documents, the content of electronic messages should be updated. In particular, the ‘DOCUMENT Certificate’ data group should be updated by including only one additional set of information concerning ‘Document Type’ and ‘Document Reference’ data elements.

During the submission or split of an electronic administrative document, where goods from two or more body records are included in the same group of packages, the first body record should mention the actual number of packages and subsequent body records should set the number of packages to zero. In order to avoid rejection of a message due to the missing number of packages in those body records, if there is more than one body record in the electronic administrative document, the value of the ‘Number of packages’ data item should be greater than zero in at least one of the data item’s occurrences.

Regulation (EC) No 684/2009 should therefore be amended accordingly.

In order to align the application date of this Regulation with the application date of a new version of the computerised system established by Decision No 1152/2003/EC, this Regulation should apply from 13 February 2020.

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