In February 2026, a Lyon manufacturer of computer numerical control machining centres signed a 2.4 million euro order with an engineering company established in Almaty. The file looked clean: Kazakhstan is not a sanctioned country, the customer produced a company registration extract, the thirty per cent deposit arrived on time. Six weeks before shipment, the customer asked by email for delivery to Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan, for logistical reasons. The sales director agreed, seeing nothing more than a change of address. It is a criminal offence, punishable by five years of imprisonment and a fine equal to twice the amount to which the offence relates.
That company did not breach an obscure rule. It applied procedures that were correct in 2024 and are no longer correct. This page sets out the checks a French exporter must carry out before signing, in the order in which they arise, with the text that grounds each of them and the consequence of skipping it. It is the entry point to five more technical analyses, on international sanctions, dual-use goods, VAT, preferential origin and Incoterms.
1. What changed in 2026, and why your procedures are out of date
Three texts have, in eighteen months, rewritten the ground on which the internal documentation of French export departments rests. The national customs code was entirely recodified by Ordinance No 2026-265 of 8 April 2026 and the decree of the same day, both in force since 1 May 2026, under the authorisation given by article 36 of Law No 2023-610 of 18 July 2023. The code now runs to seven books with L. and R. numbering. Nothing that follows is optional.
The consequence is not cosmetic. The articles that every customs litigator could quote from memory have disappeared under their old numbers. Smuggling offences are now at articles L. 512-1 to L. 512-3, export without declaration at article L. 512-7, penalties at articles L. 513-1 and following. Above all, article 459, the repressive basis for breaches of restrictive measures, has become article L. 542-2, which refers to the penalties of article L. 542-1: five years of imprisonment, a fine equal to twice the amount to which the offence relates, and confiscation of that amount, of the means of transport used and of the goods that are the proceeds of the offence. For a legal person, five times that fine. An internal procedure that still cites the old numbers is not merely dated: it becomes unusable before a judge, who reads the code in force and not the one your compliance manual quoted.
Two further deadlines govern the current year. The EORI number based on the SIRET will disappear in favour of a single number based on the SIREN, French customs having announced the deactivation of all SIRET-based EORI numbers during the second half of 2026 without setting a date. And Ordinance No 2025-1247 of 17 December 2025 repeals, with effect from 1 January 2027, articles 262, 262 ter, 258 D and 289 B of the general tax code, transferred into the code des impositions sur les biens et services. Any internal procedure citing one of those articles carries an expiry date.
2. Check who is buying, and on whose behalf
Checking the customer is not a matter of collecting a registration extract. It covers the exact legal identity, the registration number, how long the company has existed, the address of establishment, the directors, the beneficial owners where the ownership structure warrants it, the bank, any intermediary and, where it is known, the end customer. Asset freezing measures prohibit not only dealing with a designated person, but making funds or economic resources available to that person, directly or indirectly (Regulation (EU) No 269/2014, article 2). The word indirectly is the one that decides cases: a perfectly lawful company, established in a perfectly lawful country, may be owned or controlled by a designated person.
In France, the Treasury directorate maintains the national register of all freezing measures, whether national, European or United Nations. That register is what counts, not an approximate commercial list. Anyone present on French territory must implement the freeze without delay and inform the Treasury directorate (monetary and financial code, article L. 562-4), and any sum credited to a frozen account must be reported (same code, article L. 562-7).
One obligation remains widely ignored by groups with subsidiaries outside the Union. The European operator must use its best efforts to ensure that entities it owns or controls outside the Union do not take part in activities undermining restrictive measures (Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, article 8a). It is an obligation of means, not of result, but an obligation of means of which the company can trace no means looks very much, before a judge, like an obligation that was not performed. Written instructions to subsidiaries, clauses in shareholder agreements, periodic reporting: that is what will have to be produced.
3. Check what you are selling, beyond the commercial description
The commercial description of a product and its customs description do not serve the same purpose. The first has to sell; the second has to allow the tariff classification, the origin, the applicable regulations, the restrictions, the required authorisations and the import conditions in the country of destination to be determined. Classification governs the duties payable, sanitary and phytosanitary formalities, prohibitions and embargoes as well as end-use controls, and liability for the accuracy of the information declared rests on the declarant (Regulation (EU) No 952/2013, article 15).
Where there is doubt, the company has an underused tool: binding tariff information, a decision that binds the customs authorities of the whole Union and is valid for three years from the date on which it takes effect (same regulation, article 33(3)). Three years, not indefinitely. That is the first trap of a classification believed to be settled once and for all.
Two questions attach to classification, and they are the ones that carry criminal liability. The first is dual use: the export of the items, software and technology listed in Annex I to Regulation (EU) 2021/821 is subject to authorisation, and an authorisation may be required for an unlisted item depending on its end use or destination. The second is Annex XL to Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, which lists common high priority items and triggers two distinct obligations, a contractual one and a documented due diligence one. The Lyon manufacturer in the opening paragraph sold computer numerical control machine tools. They are on that annex.
4. Check where you are shipping, and what you will be able to prove
The commercial accessibility of a market says nothing about the regulatory admissibility of a product. Before the contract is concluded, you need to establish the customs duties, local taxes, technical standards, certifications, labelling rules, sanitary or phytosanitary requirements, import licences, quotas, trade defence measures and product-specific restrictions. The European Commission Access2Markets portal gives all of this from the product code and the country of destination. Never make the profitability of an export depend on an assumed duty rate: it is checked for the exact product, its exact classification, its origin, the country of destination and the date of the operation.
The destination written into the contract is not always the real destination, and that is precisely what sanctions law asks you to verify. The twentieth sanctions package, adopted on 23 April 2026, activated the anti-circumvention tool for the first time by prohibiting exports of computer numerical control machine tools and radio sets to Kyrgyzstan. The twenty-first package followed on 23 July 2026 (Regulation (EU) 2026/1848). The geography of risk is no longer limited to sanctioned countries.
Then comes proof. The VAT exemption on export exists (general tax code, article 262, I) but it is conditional on holding, for each consignment, the electronic certification of exit issued by the office of export or, failing that, one of the five items of evidence exhaustively listed by the text (annex III to the same code, article 74). The customer address never grounds the exemption. What grounds it is the actual exit from the territory of the Union, and the proof of that exit you will have kept. The exemption is not declared. It is proved.
5. Check what your contract says, and above all what it does not say
A considerable share of French exports rests on a purchase order, a pro forma invoice and general terms drafted for the domestic market and then translated. That set is enough while everything goes well, but it settles neither the governing law, nor the competent court, nor the force majeure regime, nor the fate of an international sanction arising after the order, nor the allocation of origin risk, nor the consequences of a refusal to take delivery.
Two confusions come up in almost every file. The first concerns the Vienna Convention of 11 April 1980, which applies of its own force to sales between parties established in contracting States, without needing to be stipulated and even if the parties are unaware of it, exclusion having to be express (articles 1 and 6). Many contracts said to be governed by French law are in fact governed by it, since it forms part of French law. The second concerns the Incoterms, of which the International Chamber of Commerce itself writes that they deal neither with the transfer of property, nor with the governing law, nor with dispute resolution, while the European court takes them into account to locate the place of delivery and infer jurisdiction from it (CJEU, 9 June 2011, Electrosteel Europe, Case C-87/10).
For goods in Annexes XI, XX, XXXV and XL to Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, the contract must in addition prohibit re-exportation to Russia or for use in Russia, and provide adequate remedies in the event of breach (article 12g). A separate obligation, applicable since 26 December 2024, requires the risk of re-exportation for Annex XL goods to be identified, assessed and documented, and proportionate internal controls to be put in place (article 12gb). That second obligation is not satisfied by the clause: it requires a document.
6. Check what you will be able to enforce on the day the customer does not pay
An export can be impeccable in customs terms and disastrous in financial terms. The question to ask before signing is not which court you will be able to seise, but where the debtor assets are and in which country a decision will actually be enforced. A clause giving jurisdiction to the commercial court of the seller seat reassures the general counsel and is worth nothing if the debtor has no assets in a country where that judgment travels.
Inside the Union, circulation is settled: judgments given in a Member State are recognised without any procedure and enforceable without exequatur (Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, articles 36 and 39). Outside the Union, two instruments remain underused, the Hague Convention of 30 June 2005 on choice of court agreements, which binds thirty-nine contracting parties, and the Hague Convention of 2 July 2019 on the recognition of foreign judgments, in force for the Union since 1 September 2023 and binding the United Kingdom since 1 July 2025. Arbitration draws its decisive advantage from the New York Convention of 10 June 1958, ratified by one hundred and seventy-two States.
The most widely used security deserves a final warning. The retention of title clause is valid and useful under French law, where it must be in writing no later than the time of delivery and claimed within three months of publication of the judgment opening insolvency proceedings (commercial code, articles L. 624-16 and L. 624-9). But its effectiveness against third parties depends on the law of the place where the goods are. Inside the Union, it survives the opening of proceedings in another Member State (Regulation (EU) 2015/848, article 10). Outside the Union, it is checked country by country, and that check, which costs a few hours of advice before signature, is what separates the seller who holds a security from the one who believed he held one and in fact has nothing more than an unsecured claim in foreign proceedings whose language, time limits and order of priorities he does not control.
The firm advises and litigates on all of these questions as part of its international trade law practice, and is available to review a specific transaction.
To anticipate now in internal procedures: Regulation (EU) 2026/2108 reorganises the chain of liability on import from 21 September 2027. See Le nouveau code des douanes de l’Union : ce qui change concrètement pour les entreprises (Village de la Justice, 22 September 2026, in French).
Five more technical analyses complete this page: international sanctions and what must be proved, dual-use items and export licences, VAT on exports and proof of exit, preferential origin and Incoterms, risk and retention of title.
Further reading: On-demand guarantees: how to defend against an abusive call; EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR): what changes for importers; Export agents and intermediaries: managing bribery risk under Sapin II; Carbon tax: the six points that determine your legal exposure.
If an audit or a reassessment follows despite these precautions, see our customs law page.
Frequently asked questions
Who is liable if my customs agent gets it wrong?
Liability for the accuracy and completeness of the information declared rests on the declarant (Regulation (EU) No 952/2013, article 15), but the exporter does not shed the risk by entrusting it to a third party. It can be shared contractually, which organises a recourse, not an exemption. In practice, a company that lets its customs representative classify its range without validating that classification itself has transferred a task, not an exposure. The exporter validation of the classification, traced and dated, is one of the first documents the administration asks for in a post-clearance audit.
My freight forwarder assures me everything is in order. Does that cover me?
No, and particularly not in sanctions and export control, where the obligations are imposed on the exporter by name. The obligation to document the risk of re-exportation for Annex XL goods applies to the operator who sells, supplies, transfers or exports (Regulation (EU) No 833/2014, article 12gb). The obligation to keep records allowing the end use and the end user to be identified applies to the exporter (Regulation (EU) 2021/821, article 27). A verbal assurance from a service provider is neither of those documents, and it does not produce itself before a criminal court.
Above what value are these checks justified?
The question is put the wrong way, because the obligations have no threshold. The prohibition on circumvention applies whatever the amount, as does the contractual non-re-exportation clause for the goods concerned. What varies with the amount is the proportionate level of diligence: the text calls for internal controls proportionate to the risks, not identical for everyone. An order of a few thousand euros to a customer known for ten years does not call for the same file as a first seven-figure transaction to a country bordering a sanctioned State.
What should my file contain for it to serve as evidence?
What was checked, when, by whom, from which source, and why the conclusion was considered sufficient. A dated capture of the national freezing register, the product classification sheet with its nomenclature, the customer end-use statement, the record of the decision taken on a red flag: those are the documents that separate the company that carried out its diligence from the one that says it noticed nothing. The file is kept for ten years, the longest of the three applicable regimes (commercial code, article L. 123-22).
Does a small or mid-sized company need an internal compliance programme?
It is required if the company uses a global export authorisation for dual-use items, unless the competent authority considers it unnecessary (Regulation (EU) 2021/821, article 12(4)). Outside that case, no text imposes a formal programme on a company of a given size, but the obligation of proportionate internal controls for Annex XL goods produces a similar effect. For a smaller company, a useful programme fits in a few pages: who checks what, at what point, from which source, and who decides to suspend a transaction.