Conclusions and recommendations

• Author: European Anti-Fraud Office (European Commission)
• Pages: 47-49

47

th Annual Report on the Protection of the European Union’s financial interests — Fight against fraud 

. Conclusions and

recommendations

.. Revenue

In 2018, solar panel s were the goods most af‌fected by fraud and irregularities in mone-

tary terms as was the case in 2017 and 2016. The Commission carried out on-the-spot

inspectio ns on the control strate gy for solar panels in several M ember States in 2018 due

to the risks in volved (evasion of high amounts of a nti-dumping duties) an d due to various

mutual assistance notices issued by OLAF in the past years. Member States’ awareness

about the vulnerability of imports of solar panels to fraud and irregularities was raised

which led to further controls by Member States in 2018. This only underlines the impor-

tance of inves tigations conducte d by OLAF and its coor dination role in this par ticular f‌ield.

Revenue fraud through the undervaluation of goods imported in the EU will remain a

threat to be dealt with in the coming years. OLAF’s investigations on the undervaluation

of textiles and shoes imported from China demonstrated that fraudsters will use any

loopholes an d that large-scale frau d can pay of‌f.

The digitalisation of the global economy and new economic model s like e-commerce are

rapidly shiing cross-border t rade from a few large/bulk shipments to a large number of

low-value and small shipments.

Cross-border e -commerce trade of goods poses risks for the EU’s f‌inancial interests and

for the Member Sta tes. A particular risk is t he abuse of the low-value c onsignment reliefs

by: (i) undervaluing e-commerce trade goods; (ii) splitting consignments so that they fall

below the relief t hreshold (EUR 150); (iii) impor ting commercial consign ments declared as

gis; or (iv) impor ting goods ineligible for the r elief.

Growing e-co mmerce requires that M ember States’ adapt t heir customs control st rategies

to strike the r ight balance betwe en trade facilitation /simplif‌ication and p rotecting the EU ’s

f‌inancial int erests.

A f‌lexible combination of dif‌ferent controls is therefore pivotal to close any loophole ex-

ploited by frauds ters and to enable cus toms to successfully resp ond to dif‌ferent economic

models applied through te chnology (like e-commerce) an d to ef‌fectively protect the EU’s

f‌inancial int erests while permittin g trade facilitation and simpl if‌ication.