CarryRules

Source policy

Every rule on CarryRules cites one document. This page explains what qualifies as that document, how we rank sources when they conflict, and what we do when the authority's own page cannot be reached.

What qualifies as a source

In order of weight:

  1. Law and statutory instruments. A customs code, an act, a decree, a regulation, or a notice in the national legal gazette. The strongest source, and the one that settles a dispute.
  2. Union and international instruments. EU regulations and directives, and the international texts that bind aviation carriage, where they govern the question directly.
  3. The authority's own guidance. A customs administration's passenger guide, traveller page or published FAQ. Often the clearest statement of a limit, and usually the form a traveller will actually meet at the border.
  4. The responsible agency. Where customs defers to another body — plant and animal health, medicines, firearms, cultural property — that body's published rule.

Nothing else is a source. Not a blog, a forum, a news report, a law firm's summary, an airline's description of a country's customs rules, a duty-free retailer, or another aggregator. Not an online declaration wizard, a login page, a search result or a site map — a form that asks you questions is not a document that states a rule.

When sources disagree

Border rules contradict each other in public more often than travellers expect, and the contradictions are usually real: a general allowance and a duty-free allowance that add up, a rule that changed and a guide that did not, a limit that applies only at a land border. When two sources disagree we go to the instrument and read what it actually says, then publish the rule with the conditions that make both readings make sense. A version-dated official guide beats an undated page from the same authority.

When the source cannot be reached

Some authorities block automated access, put their rules behind a bot check, publish only scanned documents, or take their site down. Where a rule's national source cannot be read, one of three things happens: the rule stays unpublished; it is published citing the binding international or union instrument, with that noted on the rule; or it is published citing a second authority of the same country that states the same thing. The rule always shows which of these it rests on.

Quotes and languages

A rule stores the authority's sentence in the authority's own language, because translation is where numbers go wrong. Turkish rules quote Turkish, Greek rules quote Greek, Korean rules quote Korean. The sentence is what we check against the live document; the English on the page is our reading of it, and the link is there for you to judge that reading.

Source links point at the exact document, not at an authority's home page, and carry rel="nofollow". We do not mirror official documents: authorities update them, and a mirror would freeze a rule at the moment we copied it.

Source health

Sources rot. Documents move, pages are rewritten, and a quote that was there last month can vanish. A rule whose quote can no longer be found at its address is flagged and re-researched rather than left standing. Coverage lists where this has happened and what is currently unsourced.