EU and partners expand list of common high priority items to further weaken Russia’s war effort

The list is an important contribution to the efforts to curtail Russia’s ability to wage its brutal, illegal and unjustified war against Ukraine. It lists specific prohibited dual-use goods and advanced technology items critical to the development, production, or use of Russian military systems. This helps exporters increase their compliance with export restrictions and help customs and enforcement agencies fight circumvention.

This latest update adds Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools to the list. These are tools Russia tries to procure to manufacture weapons; they are covered by five different HS (customs) codes, which takes the total number of codes covered in the priority list to 50.

This update was agreed at a meeting this week in Tokyo in the margins of Japan’s Asian Export Control Seminar.

Background

The EU and its international partners responded to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022 with massive and comprehensive restrictive measures. The sectoral sanctions aim at curtailing Russia’s ability to wage the war, depriving it of critical technologies and markets and significantly weakening its industrial base.

Regulation 833/2014 imposing sanctions against Russia has sharpened and includes prohibitions on the export, sale, transfer of dual-use goods and advanced technology items to target sensitive sectors in Russia’s military industrial complex and to limit its access to crucial advanced technology.

The European Commission services, in coordination with the competent authorities in the US, the UK and Japan, have identified several prohibited dual-use goods and advanced technology items used in Russian military systems found on the battlefield in Ukraine or critical to the development, production or use of those Russian military systems. These items include electronic components such as integrated circuits and radio frequency transceiver modules, as well as items essential for the manufacturing and testing of the electronic components of the printed circuit boards, and manufacturing of high precision complex metal components retrieved from the battlefield.

These battlefield items have been grouped into a list of Common High Priority Items. The List may support due diligence and effective compliance by exporters and targeted anti-circumvention actions by customs and enforcement agencies of partner countries determined to prevent that their territories are being abused for circumvention of EU sanctions purposes.