Day D-13 - RespectUs' Knowledge Base, the collection of export control and sanctions regulations
When exporting goods or technology, the last thing an exporter wants is to threaten national and international security by ignoring export control laws.
What are export control laws ?
Export control rules determine:
the items, software and technology that are restricted for export, import, transit, technical assistance or brokering;
the countries under embargoes;
the organizations and individuals that are sanctioned parties, and the restrictive measures are applying to them;
the modalities of the licensing regimes;
the authorities competent for delivering general, global and individual licenses and authorizations;
the criteria that licensing authorities are considering while assessing license applications;
the sanctions applying in case of violations;
the role of internal compliance programs, internal audits and trainings in the compliance measures to be implemented handling export controlled items, software and technology.
Are you feeling lost in the export control maze?
Be assured that you are not alone; all people working in compliance departments and exporting companies have mixed feelings when it comes to being up-to-date with the current legislation applying to their company and their exports.
Yes, being up-to-date with legislation means reading laws, looking for academic articles that interpret legal provisions which are not so clear, researching for case-law in grey zones, comparing new laws with previous versions, doing coordinated versions .... And then the day after, rules are changing again.
And, by the way, what does applicable legislation mean ? An export is always taking place between at least two countries, and so does import. Transit concerns at least three countries. And then, what about re-exports, countries of end-use that are different from countries of destination ? What about diversion, where products and technology are illegally landing in critical countries and in bad hands ?
Even if through multilateral agreements, most developed countries have agreed on a common approach to export control, and are even discussing harmonised lists of sensitive items to control, countries are still exploring ways of adding additional controlled items to their control lists and/or protecting national interests, resulting in export controls that are still varying from one country to another.
To be on the safe side, the best move to reduce risks is to know the laws that apply in the country you operate from, the country you are shipping to, any transit country the goods may pass through, and any country of end-use.
In some cases, export control rules may even have an extraterritorial impact, meaning that a State applies and enforces its law to matters and persons outside its borders.
RespectUs is the solution you are looking for !
We are taking you all burden of spending a lot of time to keep you updated on export control legislations of the countries you are dealing with. We do all the background work, day after day, keeping our platform up-to-date with the legislations that you need to apply to your daily exports.
By subscribing to the RespectUs, you save time and costs, and may access, 24/7/365, to a collection of export control laws. Where English is not the official language, English translations will be provided, together with the official legal versions. We are displaying coordinated versions, up-to-date, with a history of the different versions (with links to the respective texts), and the date of the latest update.
For technical terms, definitions and specific language, you will find a glossary.
In brief: RespectUs' module 1 (Knowledge Base) is:
A collection of export control laws and regulations
in official versions, and their English translation
in coordinated versions
updated daily
complemented by administrative regulations, soft-law, parliamentary work, academic articles, and case-law where available
integrating a search engine by key words, in order to allow users to search for specific articles and provisions
provided by RespectUs' Legal and Business Analyst team, in accordance with a strong quality control process and with the help of local correspondents
covering in a medium term up to 50 different countries worldwide, starting by the EU, Luxembourg, Germany and France that are already integrated (US to be covered mid 2023, more than 45 other countries to be covered within 2 years)
with a free subscription for the year 2023
Test us. Challenge us. Give us feedback so that we can improve and design this module according to your specific needs.
Cheers,
For the RespectUs team,
Patrick Goergen, CEO
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Next to come in this series:
D-12 Product Classification made by RespectUs, to determine dual-use and military codes
Did you miss part(s) of the series? Read here the last blogs:
1 March 2023: D-14 RespectUs is opening subscriptions on 15 March 2023