Recital 18

(18)In particular, the Commission should be empowered to adapt the list of customs procedures or customs-approved treatment or use which determine an export or import for external trade statistics; to adopt different or specific rules for goods or movements which, for methodological reasons, call for specific provisions; to adapt the list of goods and movements excluded from external trade statistics; to specify the data sources other than the customs declaration for records on imports and exports of specific goods or movements; to specify the statistical data, including the codes to be used; to establish requirements for data related to specific goods or movements; to establish requirements on the compilation of statistics; to specify the characteristics of samples; to establish the reporting period and the level of aggregation for partner countries, goods and currencies; and also to adapt the deadline for transmitting statistics, content, coverage and revision conditions for statistics already transmitted; and to establish the deadline for transmitting statistics on trade by business characteristics and statistics on trade broken down by invoicing currency. Since those measures are of general scope and are designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation, inter alia by supplementing it with new non-essential elements, they must be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny provided for in Article 5a of Decision 1999/468/EC,