Trade Compliance
Economic Security
Sustainability

In a press release dated 30 January 2026, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie – BMWE) announced a new package of measures, jointly adopted with the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (Bundesamt für Wirtschaft und Ausfuhrkontrolle – BAFA), aimed at accelerating and simplifying export controls for military and dual‑use items. In light of the current security policy challenges, the package includes several revised and newly introduced General Authorisations (Allgemeine Genehmigungen – AGGen), which entered into force on 1 February 2026. The following article provides a brief overview of the most important changes.

The administration of numerous tariff quotas is based on the so-called “first-come, first serve” principle. For the application of a reduced customs duty rate under a tariff quota, the decisive factor is the time at which the customs declaration is accepted. The General Court of the European Union (GC) (Case T-177/25) has now clarified: A missing quota number cannot be added later in order to benefit from a quota that has already been exhausted and thus obtain a lower rate of duty. The quota number must be stated completely and correctly when the declaration is submitted – otherwise, the regular rate of duty applies.

It’s a well-documented fact that a proportion of unsold products (especially textiles) are routinely being destroyed before being used, generating significant avoidable waste and CO² emissions. To address this issue, Article 24 of the Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for sustainable products (ESPR) requires businesses to disclose data about unsold consumer products while Article 25 sets an outright ban on the destruction of certain products. On 9 February 2026, the European Commission (EC) published a delegated act setting out exemptions from this ban (section 1), as well as an implementing regulation specifying the format for the disclosure requirements regarding discarded unsold consumer products (section 2).