German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA): Announcement of five new general licenses and revision of existing general licenses

With the announcement of July 28, 2023, the German Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) published five new general licenses (AGGs) and fundamentally revised already existing national general licenses. These changes, along with the five new general licenses, take effect September 1, 2023.

BAFA's aim is to create procedural simplifications for the exporting industry by, among other things, accelerating licensing procedures for deliveries to selected EU and NATO partners as well as close partner countries. If you have been using individual licenses for your exports up to now, you can potentially make use of the revised or new AGGs from September 1, 2023.

What’s new in the area of dual-use goods

Three new general licenses (AGGs) were announced:

• AGG No. 37 (for the export of dual-use goods to certain countries)
• AGG No. 38 (for software for electronic components)
• AGG No. 39 (for movement of goods listed in Annex IV Part I of the EU Dual-Use Regulation)

The following general licenses have been revised:

• AGG No. 12, AGG No. 13, AGG No. 14, AGG 16, AGG 17

AGG No. 15 remains unchanged.

What’s new in the area of munitions

Two new general licenses were announced:

• AGG No. 33 (export and transfers of other munitions)
• AGG No. 34 (software for munitions)

The following general licenses have been revised:

• AGG No. 18, AGG No. 19, AGG No. 20, AGG No. 21, AGG No. 22, AGG No. 23, AGG 24, AGG 25, AGG No. 26, AGG No. 27, AGG No. 28

Revisions to other general licenses

The following general licenses have been revised:

• AGG No. 30, AGG No. 31, AGG No. 32

Details on all new and revised AGGs as well as information on the use of general licenses can be found on the BAFA website.

What to do?

It is advisable to check whether your exports and transfers for which you currently use individual licenses will be eligible for one of the new or revised AGGs as of September 1, 2023.

If you want to use a new or revised AGG that you have not used so far in AEB Export Controls, the corresponding AGG must be stored in the compliance profile of your AEB application.

To enable ELANK2 usage reports for reportable AGG in AEB License Management, the BAFA registration number for the AGG must be entered in the master data of your company in the TCM company master.

Good to know

In some AGGs, among other things, end-uses as defined in Article 4 (1) of Regulation (EU) 2021/821 have been added as an exclusion to the validity of AGGs. Should you transfer end-uses to the export control check, the exclusion inserted by BAFA may result in an AGG no longer being proposed to you.

For several AGGs – for example, AGG No. 19 and AGGs Nos. 26-28 – the time period for submitting the report has been shortened. For the period January 1 through June 30, reports must be submitted between July 1 and July 15; for the period July 1 through December 31, reports must be submitted between January 1 and January 15. The time period for submitting the report was thus shortened from an entire calendar month to 15 days. We therefore recommend that you ensure the completeness of the reporting data required for the usage report in good time.

Use of the new AGG No. 33 must be reported for two weeks at a time – rather than the usual six months. Reports must be submitted within two weeks for the previous two weeks.

BAFA will waive reporting requirements in the future for AGG No. 14 and AGG No. 16. A reporting requirement is introduced for AGG No. 21 and AGG No. 22.

Furthermore, BAFA clarifies for various AGG that onward deliveries are only permitted if they are made to a beneficiary destination.