EAF Country Regulations Framework

Country Regulations and Guidelines Working Group Draft v0.1 for discussion, 2 October 2026 Prepared by: the working group member from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based on a completed national study of airsoft regulation in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Why a framework, and not only a questionnaire

A questionnaire asks questions. A framework also decides how answers are recorded, how far they can be trusted, and how they become comparable across 16 countries.

This draft is built on practical experience. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in several other member states, part of the law relevant to airsoft is adopted at regional level, while customs, radio, drones and data protection are regulated nationally. A method that records both levels correctly works for every member state. A questionnaire that assumes one national law cannot describe a country with regional competences.

Starting fact: airsoft is outside the scope of the EU Firearms Directive (EU) 2021/555, as stated in the Commission report COM(2021) 647 final of 27.10.2021. Every difference between member states is therefore a national decision, not an EU requirement. That matters for agenda item 4: common European solutions would have to come from national models, not from existing EU law.

Part 1. Working principles

1. Source before claim. No legal provision is reported from memory, forums or news articles. Obtain the text first, then answer.
2. Cite exactly. Every legal statement carries: act name, article (and paragraph), official gazette number and date.
3. Separate the law from practice. What the law says and what actually happens (how police, customs and event sites behave) are recorded in separate fields, never in the same sentence.
4. Separate text from interpretation. "The law says X" and "we read this as meaning Y" are different kinds of statement and are labelled differently.
5. "Not found" is a valid answer. It is better to report "unknown" than to fill a gap with a plausible assumption. An honest gap is a finding.
6. The draft trap. Before any text is used, check its header for the gazette number. Drafts, proposals and working versions published on official portals look exactly like laws in force. A text without a gazette reference, or marked draft, proposal or working version, is never reported as law.
7. Date everything. Every answer states the date on which it was verified. Information older than 12 months is flagged for review.
8. Corrections stay visible. When an answer is corrected, the correction is logged and not silently overwritten.

Part 2. Reliability labels

Every answer carries one label saying how far it can be trusted. Labels are text, not colours, so they survive printing and screen readers.

About the law (NORM):

About practice (PRACTICE):

About the source:

On the public map, these labels are reduced to the verification status of each field and a "last verified" date. The full labels stay in the working-group record.

Part 3. Who regulates what: the competence map

This is the first question for every country, because it decides whether the country needs one answer or several.

If any of the first three rows is regional, Part 4 and Part 5 are answered per territory, and the map shows regional tabs.

Worked example (BiH): customs, radio, drones and data protection are regulated at state level, with one answer for the whole country. Under the Constitution, weapons, assemblies and public order are regulated by the 10 cantons of the Federation, by Republika Srpska and by Brčko District, so these questions are answered per territory.

Part 4. The classification test (core of the framework)

The problem every country has

Almost every European weapons law contains two definitions that both fit an airsoft replica, and they lead to opposite results:

The default is therefore that the replica falls inside the weapons definition. A legislator has to actively do something to take it out. In the laws reviewed so far, two techniques do this:

• A. An energy threshold: e.g. 10.5 J, or 200 m/s with a calibre above 4.5 mm. Below it, no obligations apply.
• B. Explicit naming: airsoft is defined separately and placed in a category without obligations, or excluded altogether.

Every jurisdiction that did at least one of the two leaves airsoft free. Every jurisdiction that did neither catches it through the general air-weapon definition, and one jurisdiction deliberately named airsoft and placed it in a category that requires registration. This single rule explained every result in the laws reviewed so far.

The six diagnostic questions (asked per territory)

C6 is what players need. C1 to C5 are what make C6 verifiable and comparable.

European solution types (for agenda item 4)

Part 5. Parameter catalogue

The parameters are derived backwards from what players and organisers actually do, not from a list of laws someone remembered. This method brings in areas that are easy to overlook, such as radio, unexploded ordnance, pyrotechnics, lasers, filming of participants, payments to referees, and BBs as waste.

Tier 1: Travelling players (public map)

Tier 2: Event organisers (members area)

Event notification to police (deadline, authority) · land use (owner consent, hunting grounds, forests, protected areas, abandoned military sites) · unexploded ordnance where relevant · fire safety · first aid · organiser liability and the validity of waivers · insurance · radio (licence-free bands, prohibition of jamming and interception) · lasers (class under EN 60825-1, not "eye safe") · drones · filming of participants and personal data · BBs as waste · minors (form of parental consent).

Tier 3: Federation diagnostics (working group only, never public)

Conflicts between laws, and between laws and practice · legal gaps · draft laws in progress · enforcement cases · open questions. Each federation decides what it shares here.

Part 6. Borders and transit: questions that avoid the false "yes"

Why this matters: procedures for the temporary import, export and transit of sporting weapons are usually written for shooting sports. Their scope may be limited by calibre (often 4.5 mm, while airsoft is 6 mm), by mode of fire, or to members of particular sport federations. A plain "Is there a transit procedure?" can therefore receive a truthful "yes" that does not apply to airsoft at all.

The questions therefore probe coverage, not existence:

Opportunity for the EAF (T5): border procedures for sporting equipment often rely on an equipment list certified by a national sport federation. A standard EAF equipment certificate / player document, issued through the national member federations, could become the document that border procedures refer to. That is a concrete deliverable for agenda item 4.

Part 7. Standard record templates

7.1 Legal act sheet: one per act

Full title · Level and territory · Gazette no. and date · Amendments · In force since
Competent authority · Relevant articles · Verbatim quotes · Source label · Verified on · File
Draft check: gazette number present, not marked draft/proposal [ ]

7.2 Territory sheet: one per country, or per region where competence is regional

Territory · Weapons law (title, gazette) · Classification test C1 to C6 · Minimum age
Penalty range · Event notification (law, deadline) · Transport rule · Notes · Verified on

7.3 Conflict record: working group only

ID · Short title · What collides with what (A: act, article vs B: act, article or practice)
Who bears the consequence (player / organiser / club / federation) · Consequence · Likelihood
Current workaround · Possible solution · Reliability label

Part 8. Publication layers

Part 9. Quality gates before publication

• [ ] every legal statement has act, article and gazette
• [ ] draft check passed (gazette number present, not a draft)
• [ ] every field has a reliability label
• [ ] law and practice are in separate fields
• [ ] legal threshold and game limits are in separate fields
• [ ] territory coverage stated (all territories / which ones are missing)
• [ ] verified-on date present
• [ ] second reading of every quote against the source, independent of the first

Part 10. What this means for the map

Status in prototype v0.4:

Part 11. Proposal: Bosnia and Herzegovina as the reference country

The national study for Bosnia and Herzegovina (completed 23.08.2026) already contains everything Tier 1 requires. We propose to:

1. fill Bosnia and Herzegovina first, from public legal sources only, as the worked example of a completed questionnaire;
2. show it on the map with all 12 territories, as proof that the regional model works;
3. let the other federations use it as a reference when completing their own questionnaire.

Annex: Minimum question set for the questionnaire (Tier 1)

Each answer carries a reliability label (Part 2). "Unknown" and "not regulated" are valid answers.