Export license required for certain personal protective equipment

17/03/20

On 14 March 2020 a Regulation was published that an export license is required for certain protective equipment (e.g. face shields, mouth - nose-protection equipment, gloves, protective garments, protective spectacles & visors). This Regulation has entered into force as of 15 March 2020 (date of publication) and should have a duration of 6 weeks.

What does this mean for your company?

In these challenging times, this is another point of consideration.

In case your company exports personal protective equipment falling under one of the HTS codes mentioned in the Regulation (for example 3926.9097, 9020.0000, 6307.9098), your company is obliged to apply for an export license in order to be able to export these products.

It is not relevant whether these products originate from the EU or not. This export license should be applied for at the competent authorities of the Member State where the exporter is established (in the Netherlands normally the Centrale Dienst In- en Uitvoer is the issuing authority but at this moment it is not clear yet whether this will also be the case for these export licenses). Without such an export license, the exportation is prohibited.

This measure enters directly into force and will hold for at least 6 weeks. For a more detailed description we refer to the full text of the Regulation. What we understand from the local authorities is that some things are still unclear for them as well but that they are doing their utmost to provide us with clear guidelines.