Substantial Concessions in Israel’s Defense Export Contorls

Substantial Concessions in Israel’s Defense Export Contorls

defense export

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The Israeli Ministry of Defense has announced a substantial loosening of restrictions on defense exporters, including significantly shortening the list of products for which overseas marketing requires prior approval from the Defense Export Controls Agency (DECA). Among others – unclassified cyber, electro-optics products, security and anti-terrorism courses will be taken out of the list of excluded products.

The announcement was made by DECA director Racheli Chen during the agency’s annual conference.

This is, in fact, the most comprehensive move of loosening restrictions on exporters since the establishment of DECA, 11 years ago. According to the agency’s announcement, it has been part of a large-scale reform led by the Ministry of Defense during the last two years. DECA director said that after the completion of the reform, defense exporters will be able to “conduct a one-stage licensing process of unclassified products in the authorized countries. The reform will relieve the burden of thousands of requests for licenses every year, cut bureaucracy, enable DECA to focus on the control of substantial issues, and improve services to exporters”.

Following the Knesset confirmation of the updated defense export control regulations and the exemption of some of the export licences, an exempt on marketing license for some of the anti-terror courses was added (e.g. VIP and installation security, airport and public transportation security, security training and policing courses).

According to DECA director, “within the next few months we will execute the most substantial stage of the reform, which will decrease to a large extent the need to receive marketing licenses for many products”.

The reform’s second stage includes the following concessions:

  • Reduction in the excluded products list that require two-stage license process (marketing and export) regarding unclassified products to authorized contries. The list includes 27 families of products that encompass thousands of items.
  • The reform will take out of the list most of the unclassified cyber products, electro-optics (observation, night vision and other unclassified products), satellite products, etc.
  • The number of authorized countries (where marketing license of unclassified products is not obligatory) will be expanded to 102 countries.
  • Shifting the marketing stage – a revolutionary move that will enable the marketing abroad of most of the unclassified products without the need of a marketing license, until the stage of a compelling offer. In fact, this will let exporters conduct most of the initial marketing activities without license.
  • Exempt from marketing licenses for unclassified products to the US.
  • Exempt from the expansion of a marketing license to an intermediate factor (for authorized countries) – a licensed exporter will not need an additional license.
  • Substantial updates in “combat equipment order”.

Among the concessions that came into force during the last months are: an exempt from temporary export license for demonstration and participation in exhibition of unclassified products to authorized countries, an exempt from export license for demonstration to a final user, etc.