EU prepares for challenges ahead with transfers directive

As companies start applying for new intra-EU defence transfer licences in the third quarter of 2012, the EU will be on the lookout for two possible hitches: lingering requirements for old-style transit licences, and potential delays by border authorities unfamiliar with the new licence forms that replace them.

"We'll be checking on the transit licences because they are supposed to disappear," an EU official told IHS Jane's . "If they don't, we'll have to rely on the injured companies to come to us so we can start investigating."

Often known as 'passage through' and 'entrance' licences, the transit documents apply to defence goods moving from an originating EU member state across the territory of intermediate ones on their way to the EU country of destination.

While other categories of industrial goods have long enjoyed free circulation within the 27 EU nations' Single Market, defence goods have stood apart with strict single-licence transfers and special transit rules governing their movements.

The EU's defence transfers directive (2009/43/EC) changes all that. It authorises the use of two new licences – general and global – which simplify the transfer of goods from an originating company in one EU country to recipients in the destination country.