No L 36/2 Official Journal of the European Communities 14. 2. 96 COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 267/9%6 of 13 February 1996 amending Regulation (EEC) No 3149/92 laying down detailed rules for the supply of food from intervention stocks for the benefit of the most deprived persons in the Community THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, Having regard to Council Regulation (EEC) No 3730/87 of 10 December 1987 laying down the general rules for the supply of food from intervention stocks to designated organizations for distribution to the most deprived persons in the Community ('), as amended by Regulation (EC) No 2535/95 (¥, and in particular Article 6 thereof, Whereas, in order to deal with situations in which certain basic products are temporarily unavailable in intervention stocks at the time of adoption of an annual plan or during its implementation, Article 1 of Regulation (EEC) No 3730/87, as amended by Regulation (EC) No 2535/95, provides that the products concerned may be mobilized on the Community market, although only under condi- tions which do not conflict with the principle of supply from intervention stocks; whereas the rules for such mobilization must be fixed and Commission Regulation (EEC) No 3149/92(%), as last amended by Regulation (EEC) No 2826/93 (%), should therefore be amended, incorporating the technical adjustments that have become necessary in the light of experience; Whereas, in order to comply with the principle that prio- rity should be given to intervention stocks when mobili- zing products to supply to the most deprived persons in the Community, optimum distribution of existing public stocks among the Member States participating in the scheme should be ensured when the plan is adopted and intra-Community transfer operations made necessary by the non-availability of the products requested in one or more Member States should be coordinated ; whereas, for the purposes of applying Article 1 of the abovementioned Council Regulation, a minimum quantity threshold should also be set beneath which, for reasons of good economic management, intra-Community transfers should not be implemented ; Whereas, in order to allow judicious management of the scheme and to organize the implementation of the annual Community plan, it is appropriate, firstly, to determine, when that plan is being adopted, for which products o L 352, 15. 12. 1987, p. 1. o L 260, 31. 10. 1995, p. 3. o L 313, 30. 10. 1992, p. 50. o L 258, 16. 10. 1993, p. 11. temporary non-availability justifies mobilization on the market of the same product or a product in the same category, and secondly to set the financial allocation to be made available to the Member State for this purpose ; whereas, to meet the abovementioned objectives, that allo- cation should be made on the basis of the applications submitted by the Member State for the annual plan, the quantities of the products unavailable in the intervention stocks and the allocations made during previous financial years and their effective use; Whereas, with the same objective of giving priority to the use of intervention stocks, it should be laid down that supplies using products to be withdrawn from those stocks must be allocated before operations to mobilize products of the same category on the Community market are undertaken ; Whereas the best conditions should be obtained for carrying out the different types of supply and it should be specified that invitations to tender must be published to ensure that all operators established in the Community have equal access; Whereas the measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinions of all the Management Committees concerned, HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION : Article 1 Regulation (EEC) No 3149/92 is amended as follows : 1. Article 2 (1) is replaced by the following: ‘1.  Before 1 October each year the Commission shall adopt an annual plan for the distribution of food for the benefit of the most deprived persons, broken down by Member State concerned. For the purposes of allocating the resources among Member States, the Commission shall take account of the best estimates of the number of most deprived persons in the Member States concerned. It shall also take acocount of how operations were carried out and the uses to which resources were put in previous financial years, on the basis in particular of the reports provided for in Article 10 of this Regulation’