When Do You Need a License to Trade in Goods or Provide Services?
A license is required to export, import, transit, or transship strategic goods or to re-export or re-transfer them extra-territorially.
A license may also be necessary to provide services such as brokering, transportation, and technical assistance.
The National Control Lists of Strategic Goods contain military and dual-use items subject to control. The lists include finished items or systems, raw materials, components, software, and technology. Examples are:
- Weapons, ammunition, and explosives
- Goods, technology, software, or components designed or modified for military use (such as vehicles, aircraft, marine craft, imaging equipment, armored protective equipment, cryptographic technology, and training materials for a weapons system)
- Dual-use goods, technology, software, documents, and diagrams that meet certain technical standards and could be used for military or civilian purposes (such as nuclear materials, chemical agents, electronics, computer and telecommunications equipment, sensors, lasers, machine tools, navigation and avionics equipment, marine technology, and aerospace technology)
Click here [Note: this should link to the How to Classify Your Products page] for information on how to classify commodities against the National Control Lists.
A license is required to ship physical items across the border and also for the transmission of software or technology through electronic media, including fax, phone, e-mail, or any other electronic device or in person, with a destination outside the Republic of Kosovo.
The disclosure or transfer of technical data, whether in person or by fax, phone, e-mail, or any other electronic device, to a foreign person, whether in Kosovo or abroad, is also licensable.
Technology is specific information necessary for the development, production, or use of strategic goods. This information takes the form of “technical data” or “technical assistance.”
Technical data are blueprints, plans, diagrams, models, formulae, engineering designs and specifications, manuals and instructions (written or recorded – including software), and any other media or devices such as disks, tapes, and read-only memory.
Technical assistance is any technical support related to the repair, development, production, assembly, testing, or maintenance of strategic goods, as well as any other technical service in the form of textual or verbal instructions, training and transfer of business knowledge or skills, or other consulting services, including the transfer of technical data. Technical assistance is considered a “related service.” Controls on technical assistance do not apply to information in the public domain, to basic scientific research, or to the minimum necessary information for patent applications.
A license may be required for the export and transit of non-listed items if they are or may be intended for weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-related uses, for their means of delivery, or for a military end use in an embargoed destination. For more information, please see Guidance on Catch-All Controls.
If you are exporting goods that are being taken directly from your place of work by your customer, instruct them to check if they need an export license. It is also your responsibility to indicate clearly in relevant commercial documents relating to domestic transfers of strategic goods manufactured in Kosovo that those goods are subject to controls if exported from Kosovo. Relevant commercial documents include a sales contract, order confirmation, invoice, or dispatch note.