Cigarette seizure payments

4.11.2013

Question for written answer E-012454-13
to the Commission
Rule 117
Bart Staes (Verts/ALE)

Cigarette seizure payments apply to four international tobacco companies, which have signed legally binding agreements with the European Union, for those cigarettes seized in the EU belonging to those companies (excluding counterfeit cigarettes).

1. Can the Commission provide information about the number of seizures of more than 50 000 cigarettes since the implementation of those agreements?

2. What is the total number of cigarettes seized in seizures of more than 50 000 cigarettes since the implementation of those agreements?

3. In many of those seizures were the cigarettes found to be counterfeit or genuine?

4. In how many seizures was it an independent laboratory that declared the cigarettes to be counterfeit?

5. Did OLAF lower or change the threshold for when to start or not start an investigation after a seizure, as OLAF’s Giovanni Kessler indicated in the Committee on Budgetary Control?

OJ C 230, 17/07/2014