On 9 April 2026, the UK Office of Trade Sanctions Implementation (OTSI) announced that, from 27 April 2026, it will assume responsibility for licensing the export of sanctioned goods (and associated ancillary services) to sanctioned destinations (see here). Such licence applications will continue to be made and processed via the Department for Business and Trade’s (DBT) SPIRE system. The change will add to OTSI’s existing responsibilities for licensing sanctioned standalone services (for example professional business…
On 15 January 2026, the EU applied its new automatic and dynamic adjustment mechanism to the Oil Price Cap (“OPC”) on seaborne Russian crude oil, reducing the cap from USD 47.60 to USD 44.10 per barrel, effective 1 February 2026. The mechanism ensures that the OPC remains 15% below the average Urals crude market price over a rolling 22‑week period. On the same day, the UK confirmed that it would lower its OPC to USD…
The EU and UK have recently updated their respective lists of items subject to dual-use export controls, introducing important changes covering emerging technologies. In this blog post, we summarise the key updates under both the EU and UK regimes, and we highlight key steps that exporters can take in response to the changes. EU updates to the EU Dual-Use Regulation On 14 November 2025, the EU published Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2003, amending Annex I of…
On 23 April 2025, the UK government published the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, which took effect on 24 April 2025. These new regulations amended the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to introduce additional trade restrictions, focusing on export and import prohibitions, technology, and software transfers. We have set out summaries of the key new measures below. Sectoral Software The amending regulations introduce prohibitions on making available and transferring “sectoral software” to…