Study contributing to an Impact Assessment on Council Directive 2008/118/EC concerning the general arrangements for excise duty

Goal and scope of the Study:

The main purpose of this study is to provide necessary information about potential impacts of various policy options at stake, allowing legislators to take an informed decision.

The overall objective of the Impact Assessment is to identify possibilities for simplification, for reduction of fraud and of administrative burdens and costs while achieving a higher degree of compliance. Within that scope, the purpose of the study is to help the Commission services in assessing if and why they should act and how these objectives could and should be achieved. The Commission also needs to verify if the best option is a legislative proposal at the EU level and to which extent a solution could be achieved by administrative cooperation or other non-legislative measures.

Against this background, the Study should gather and analyse evidence in order to quantify the magnitude of the problems and to estimate the costs and benefits of available solutions for solving issues in the area of excise duties. This exercise will help inform decision-makers of the potential outcomes in the context of a possible revision of Directive 2008/118/EC, covering the following:

• verification of the magnitude and existence of the problems identified in the evaluation studies,
• assessment of the evolution of the problems if no further action at EU level is taken (dynamic baseline scenario),
• identification of policy options to address the problems and an assessment of their economic, social and environmental impacts, and
• comparison of each possible option.

As a result, CASE experts will conduct an in-depth and detailed impact assessment of the major policy options, capable of addressing the abovementioned issues. More specifically, we will focus on the following policy areas: customs – excise coordination, the automation of duty paid from Business-to-Business (B2B), collector’s fee that enforces excise debt collection in other Member States, linking data produced by the e-AD to irregularities, the accumulation of excise debt, the guarantee release and the provision of the Recovery Directive, and other major policy options that may be identified during the course of the study.

Sponsor: Directorate General Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD)

Project leader: CASE

Consortium leader: Economisti Associati srl

Project partners: Economisti Associati, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), wedoIT – solutions GmbH