Regulation (EU) 599/2014 of the European Council and of the Council of 16 April amending Council Regulation (EC) No 428/2009 setting up a Community regime for the control of exports, transfer, brokering and transit of dual-use items has been published in the EU Official Journal of 12 June 2014 (L173/79)
The amendments concern essentially the power granted to the Commission to adopt delegated acts regarding the lists items and countries covered by the DU Regulation.
More specifically:
- a paragraph is added to article 15 allowing the Commission to update the list of dual-use items. Previously the annual update was done by Council and the Parliament under the normal legislative procedure that takes around a year.
- a sub-paragraph is added to Article 9(1) that gives to the Commission the power to remove destinations from the scope of UGEAs if such destinations become subject to an arms embargo as referred to in article 4(2)
- article 23(a) and 23(b) are added to lay down the procedure for the Commission to adopt delegated acts and to allow the Council and European Parliament to object, oppose or even revoke the delegated power.
A joint statement (European Parliament, Council and Commission) related to the amending regulation has also been published recognises the importance to keep updated the dual use items control lists in order to keep up with new threats and rapid technological changes (with an accent to the risk of export of certain information and communication technologies that can be used in connection with human rights violations, technologies used for mass-surveillance, monitoring, tracking, tracing and censoring, as well as for software vulnerabilities). A new legislative proposal is expected in the near future to control specific risks set by information and communication