1. Member States shall communicate to the Commission within the first 10 days of each month in the case of Community or regional surveillance:

(a) in the case of prior surveillance, details of the sums of money (calculated on the basis of cif prices) and quantities of goods in respect of which import documents were issued or endorsed during the preceding period;

(b) in every case, details of imports during the period preceding the period referred to in subparagraph (a).

The information supplied by Member States shall be broken down by product and by country.

Different provisions may be laid down at the same time and by the same procedure as the surveillance arrangements.

2. Where the nature of the products or special circumstances so require, the Commission may, at the request of a Member State or on its own initiative, amend the timetables for submitting this information.

3. The Commmission shall inform the Member States accordingly.

TITLE V Safeguard measures

Article 16

1. Where a product is imported into the Community in such greatly increased quantities and/or on such terms or conditions as to cause, or threaten to cause, serious injury to Community producers, the Commission, in order to safeguard the interests of the Community, may, acting at the request of a Member State or on its own initiative:

(a) limit the period of validity of import documents within the meaning of Article 12 to be endorsed after the entry into force of this measure;

(b) alter the import rules for the product in question by making its release for free circulation conditional on production of an import authorization, the granting of which shall be governed by such provisions and subject to such limits as the Commission shall lay down.

The measures referred to in (a) and (b) shall take effect immediately.

2. As regards Members of the WTO, the measures referred to in paragraph 1 shall be taken only when the two conditions indicated in the first subparagraph of that paragraph are met.

3. (a) If establishing a quota, account shall be taken in particular of:

- the desirability of maintaining, as far as possible, traditional trade flows,

- the volume of goods exported under contracts concluded on normal terms and conditions before the entry into force of a safeguard measure within the meaning of this Title, where such contracts have been notified to the Commission by the Member State concerned,

- the need to avoid jeopardizing achievement of the aim pursued in establishing the quota.

(b) Any quota shall not be set lower than the average level of imports over the last three representative years for which statistics are available unless a different level is necessary to prevent or remedy serious injury.

4. (a) In cases in which a quota is allocated among supplier countries, allocation may be agreed with those of them having a substantial interest in supplying the product concerned for import into the Community.

Failing this, the quota shall be allocated among the supplier countries in proportion to their share of imports into the Community of the product concerned during a previous representative period, due account being taken of any specific factors which may have affected or may be affecting the trade in the product.