Christa Tobler, EU Corona law: Restrictions on the export of protective equipment
In mid-March 2020, the European Commission adopted, against the background of the Corona pandemic, temporal common rules for the export into third countries of personal protective equipment, needed in the context of the Corona pandemic, out of the EU.
Under the new system, the export of personal protective equipment, such as medical face masks, is subject to an authorisation requirement. In a first step, the new requirement applied to all third countries alike. However, in a second step the Commission exempted a number of countries and territories, among them also the four EFTA States. How did this come about and is such different treatment of different third States legally acceptable? And what about export restrictions inside the Union’s internal market, between Member States?
Christa Tobler explores these questions in a text written for EFTA-Studies.org (Christa Tobler, ‘EU corona emergency law: Restrictions on the export of protective equipment, notably from the EU into third countries like Switzerland (Regulation 2020/402)’, Analysis. EFTA-Studies.org 30 March 2020, https://www.efta-studies.org/eu-corona-emergency-law).
A shorter version of this text has been published as a Leiden Law Blog (Christa Tobler, ‘EU Corona law: Restrictions on the export of protective equipment’, Leiden Law Blog 31 March 2020, https://leidenlawblog.nl/articles/eu-corona-law-restrictions-on-the-export-of-protective-equipment).