1.Without prejudice to Articles 15 and 27, payment of the refund shall be conditional upon proof being furnished that the products covered by accepted export declarations have left the customs territory of the Community in their unaltered state within 60 days of such acceptance.
However, the quantities of products taken as samples at the time of completion of customs export formalities and not returned subsequently shall be regarded as not having been removed from the products' net mass from which they were actually taken.
2.For the purposes of this Regulation, catering supplies delivered to drilling or extraction rigs as defined in point (a) of Article 41(1) shall be deemed to have left the customs territory of the Community.
3.Freezing shall be without prejudice to compliance with paragraph 1.
This shall also apply to repackaging, provided that such repackaging does not result in a change of the product code in the refund nomenclature or the code of the goods in the Combined Nomenclature. Repackaging may take place only after the customs authorities have given their agreement.
Where repackaging takes place, the T5 control copy shall be completed accordingly.
The affixing or changing of labels may be authorised under the same conditions as repackaging under the second and third subparagraphs.
4.Where for reasons of force majeure an exporter cannot comply with the time limit laid down in paragraph 1, that time limit may, at the exporter’s request, be extended for such period as the competent authorities of the Member State of export deem necessary in the circumstances.