EU prohibitions and restrictions (P&R): the border controls that aren't about duty

A consignment can be correct on tariff, origin and value and still be stopped at the border. That is what prohibitions and restrictions do: they are the controls that apply to goods entering, leaving or moving through the EU for reasons other than collecting duty - protecting health, safety, the environment, national treasures or intellectual property, among others.

The scale is easy to underestimate. The Commission's 2026 'Integrated EU Prohibitions and Restrictions List' brings together 383 EU legal acts, sorted into three families - manufactured products, agri-food, and a third group for everything else, from forced labour to firearms, dual-use items (goods with both civilian and military applications) and explosives. And even that figure understates the picture, because sanctions and national measures are excluded from the list entirely. For a customs practitioner, the message is simple: P&R are a compliance layer of their own, screened alongside the duty position, not after it.

What are prohibitions and restrictions?

Prohibitions or restrictions may be imposed on imports, exports or goods in transit when justified on grounds such as

• public morality, public policy or public security;
• the protection of the health and life of humans, animals or plants;
• the protection of the environment;
• the protection of national treasures of artistic, historic or archaeological value;
• or the protection of industrial and commercial property.

These are the grounds on which the Treaties (the Treaty on European Union, TEU, and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, TFEU) allow the free movement of goods to be restricted - which is why the list is closed. Commercial protection, for example, is not among them. Customs enforces P&R under Articles 134 and 267 of the Union Customs Code (Regulation (EU) No 952/2013), the provisions that place goods entering and leaving the customs territory under customs supervision.

In short, P&R carry the EU's sectoral - that is, non-customs - rules for goods into the customs process. Familiar examples include controls on medicines, health checks on live animals, and quantity limits on fluorinated greenhouse gases.

What forms do they take?

A prohibition or restriction is rarely a simple ban. In practice it may take the form of

• a total prohibition (for example, the ban on importing skins of certain seal pups);
• a control carried out at the border by a specialised competent authority, such as a health or food-safety check on live animals;
• a quantitative restriction under a quota, as for certain fluorinated greenhouse gases;
• an authorisation or registration requirement for the importer or exporter, as for medicinal products or explosive precursors;
• an authorisation, approval or notification tied to a particular shipment;
• or a documentary condition, where a licence, permit, certificate, declaration or statement must accompany the consignment.

How do I find the ones that apply to my goods?

P&R attach to goods by their commodity code, so the starting point is always the specific Combined Nomenclature (CN) or TARIC code for each product in the flow.

To see the wider landscape, the Commission's Integrated EU Prohibitions and Restrictions List brings the EU acts together and flags when new ones enter into or cease to apply - useful for anticipating change, less so as a live compliance check. It is organised into three families:

• manufactured products,
• agri-food, and
• a third group for measures that fit neither, such as forced labour, firearms, dual-use items and explosives.

Treat it as a finding aid, not a legal source: it is expressly non-exhaustive, and where it diverges from the Official Journal the Official Journal prevails. It is best used to locate the relevant acts, with the authoritative position always in the legal act itself.

What should I do in practice?

Treat P&R as a screening step in its own right. For each commodity code, identify which sectoral rules touch the goods - by product type and end use as well as by code - and confirm what each requires before the goods move, since many conditions (a licence, a certificate, a prior notification) must be in place when the declaration is lodged, not gathered afterwards.

Watch the transit position: some controls are triggered by release for free circulation or by placing on the market, and so do not apply to goods merely passing through under transit, while others - controls on drug precursors, for instance - apply to the movement itself.

The trigger depends on the instrument, so check it rather than assume. And because the measures change frequently, track forthcoming entries and repeals rather than relying on last year's position.

Did you know?

Air conditioners are subject to two measures listed in the P&R list: fluotinated greenhouse gases and ozone-depleting substances. You can find detailed information about these measures by using Smart Taric AI.