On Friday 21 May, the European Commission adopted new rules on the systematic exchange of information between Member States relating to refusals to grant authorisations to possess firearms, it said in a statement.
“It is estimated that 30,000 refusals are made every month in the EU for security reasons. The delegated regulation adopted today will allow competent national authorities to check, using the Internal Market Information System, whether a person applying for a permit to carry a weapon has been refused a similar permit in another Member State”.
This will help to “prevent people from trying to circumvent bans on owning a firearm by ‘jurisdiction shopping’”, says the Commission.
This decision, taken through a delegated act, will be in force from 31 January 2022. The act in question defines the terms of this exchange and details, for example, the type of information, including personal information, that must be provided. It should also specify the arrangements for exchanges between the administrations concerned, between customs authorities in some Member States and other types of authorities in the other Member States.
This delegated act clarifies the objectives of the European Firearms Directive, revised in 2017 and codified in March 2021.
Link to the text: https://bit.ly/2SbFtNK (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)