More EU Export Control Guidance Needed for Universities, Official Says

“It’s difficult to introduce the mindset that is needed to have an effective export control in a university setting,” Janssen said. “It's difficult to ingrain export control reflexes in a researcher who has been trained from the start to think in terms of international collaboration.”

Janssen said some compliance requirements place unfair burdens on researchers, who need to check “every single time that they perform collaboration” whether they’re complying with export regulations. While she said universities are “starting to realize” they need to install internal compliance programs, Janssen said they trail far behind compliance programs among commercial businesses. “The universities are still quite inexperienced with regards to export control compliance,” she said. “Basically, we still need help.”

Many of the member schools of the League of European Research Universities, which include the universities of Oxford, Milan and Barcelona, are involved in emerging technologies, including “almost every single” one initially listed in 2018 under the U.S. Commerce Department's emerging technology control effort. “Whatever controls come out, it's something that we will be impacted by,” Janssen said. “So it's very important for us that these controls are very clear and are very targeted.” U.S. universities have expressed similar concerns (see 2110070042 and 2012020044).

Although the EU has issued some general compliance guidance, including for researchers involved in dual-use items, universities say it’s still difficult to make sure their many publications are compliant, Janssen said. Big universities have 10,000 to 15,000 publications, she said. “Even if you think that only a small percentage of those would be covered by an export control, that would still leave a couple hundred publications per year.”

Researchers need to check each of those publications for export control or technology disclosure concerns, but Janssen said that process is usually complicated. “There are simple questions like, who is the exporter? Is it the publisher? Is it the researcher?” she said. “How can we actually determine whether it's a problem? What kind of section needs to be taken out of a publication?” Universities still need “more practical guidance” from the EU, she said.

Researchers are also still unclear about export control regulations surrounding foreign students or staff, including those only in the EU temporarily. The EU’s new export control regulations restrict certain exports with sensitive end uses, including the provision of “technical assistance,” to a university resident of a third country who is “temporarily present” in the EU customs territory.

“We have hundreds and thousands of researchers and students coming in and out every day,” Janssen said. While she said it’s “quite obvious” that the control would apply to a visiting delegation from a foreign government that stays for a “couple days” or a visiting foreign researcher who stays for a “couple months,” it is less clear in other cases.

“What happens when we talk about Ph.D. students or postdocs or even master’s students, who all are at the university for a couple of years but almost all with the intention of going back to the country they came from. Are they also temporarily present?” Janssen said. “For universities, this is a vital point that needs to be clarified.”