Policy recommendations

  • All EU Member Sates should work towards an effective new Arms Trade Treaty and towards a new international instrument for the control over brokers. All EU Member States should implement extra-territorial legislation that enables them to control European brokers¡¦ operations from abroad;
  • The EU should adopt a legally binding Common Position on arms trade without any further delay, thereby making the Code of Conduct (CoC) a legally binding instrument;
  • The EU should strengthen the Code of Conduct so that all EU Member States are required to control all transit, are required to apply the CoC criteria for licensed production overseas or subsidiaries, and are required to demand end-user certificates and control over the re-transfer of their arms;
  • The EU should guarantee a more effective use of criterion 8 of the EU-Code of Conduct that takes greater account of the economic situation in the receiving country. This criterion should be redefined in such a way that Member States will only be able to permit a transfer if it can be ensured that the transfer will not harm sustainable development and the applicant/recipient can identify a legitimate defence need for the specific transfer;
  • The EU should discuss high military spending in their bilateral dialogues with those countries that receive EU development aid with the aim of lowering these expenditures and using these funds for development goals;
  • The EU should work towards more coherent policies; the EU council and Commission work groups on arms control and development policies should regularly meet and discuss issues of common concern.

Case: Arms-trade Policies

01-12-2008 Common position on the control of exports of military technology and equipment

01 December 2008

On the 8th of December, a major step forward was made in the fight against illicit arms exports. On this day, a common position was reached within the Council on common rules governing the control of exports of military technology and equipment,  replacing the already existing Code of Conduct on that subject.  

This achievement is quite historical, as for years, agreements on the issue of the control of arms exports was contentious and blocked by a few Member States.

Under that Common Position, each EU Member State must assess, on a case-by-case basis, export license applications made to it for items on the EU Common Military List, in accordance with the following 8 criteria: 

  • Respect for the international obligations and commitments of Member States;
  • Respect for human rights in the country of final destination as well as respect by that country of international humanitarian law;
  • Internal situation in the country of final destination, as a function of the existence of tensions or armed conflicts;
  • Preservation of regional peace, security and stability;
  • National security of the Member States and of territories whose external relations are the responsibility of a Member State, as well as that of friendly and allied countries;
  • Behaviour of the buyer country with regard to the international community, as regards in particular its attitude to terrorism, the nature of its alliances and respect for international law;
  • Existence of a risk that the military technology or equipment will be diverted within the buyer country or re-exported under undesirable conditions;
  • Compatibility of the exports of the military technology or equipment with the technical and economic capacity of the recipient country, taking into account the desirability that States should meet their legitimate security and defence needs with the least diversion of human and economic resources for armaments.

These 8 criteria are the same 8 criteria laid down in the code of conduct, however, the recently agreed common position now makes them legally binding. They have to be implemented in national legislation. This is a major step forward in the fight against illicit arms exports. Fair Politics EU formulated a case study on illegal arms trade, and had been urging for a legally binding code of conduct within its policy recommendation. Thanks also to many MEPs, who agreed with Fair Politics EU that this was an important issue and  kept putting it on the political agenda, the Council has now finally adopted the code, as a common position.

In the past few months a seminar on the topic had been organized by the ALDE group within the European Parliament, and just recently another question had been addressed towards the Council, by several MEPs. Please find more details on this below.  

On the 15th of October, the MEPs Rueda, Beer, Plüger, Kristovskis and Brok questioned the European Council, and in particular the French presidency, on the legal status of the EU code of conduct on Arms Exports. The code of conduct was constructed 10 years ago, but was never made legally binding on member state level. So far only Belgium had implemented the code in its national legislation.

As referred to in the question below, the French presidency had promised to stop opposing the legally binding nature of the Code of Conduct during its presidency and to make more efforts towards making the code legally binding.

Due to a lack of control on arms exports, many countries, militias and rebel groups in conflict today, are still receiving weapons directly or indirectly from amongst others European manufactures, or weapons that have been transferred via EU territory. Some countries spend much more money on their “defence” budgets than  for socio-economic purposes. Any sort of development is therefore not taking place in conflict regions. Exporting weapons to these sensitive regions is therefore clearly inconsistent with the EU’s development policy. For this question asked, the following MEPs received a coherence star on our website on behalf of their political groups; Raül Romeva i Rueda (Verts/ ALE) Angelika Beer (Verts/ ALE) Tobias Pflüger (GUE/NGL) Ìirts Valdis Kristovskis (UEN) and Elmar Brok (PPE-DE).

The full question posted towards the council;

Subject: Subject: EU Code of Conduct on arms exports; a common position must be adopted
Date: October 15th, 2008.          
O-0109/08           
ORAL QUESTION WITH DEBATE pursuant to Rule 108 of the Rules of Procedure by Raül Romeva i Rueda and Angelika Beer, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group, Tobias Pflüger, on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group, Ìirts Valdis Kristovskis, on behalf of the UEN Group, Elmar Brok to the Council

Subject: EU Code of Conduct on arms exports; a common position must be adopted

Despite the fact that the draft common position to make the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports legally binding has been ready for adoption by the European Council since 2005 (the text was prepared under the Dutch Presidency and agreed by the COARM but blocked in COREPER, ref. No 10569/05, 28.6.2005), owing to French political resistance, no progress had been made by the beginning of the French Presidency. However, the French Presidency promised to change its attitude during its period in office and to complete the process. Nevertheless, at the end of September 2008 this progress seems not to be a reality. In the meantime Parliament has been asked to make up its mind on two draft directives on intra-Community trade in defence-related products, one of them proposing 'simplifying terms and conditions of transfers of defence-related products within the Community' .

1. Will the French Presidency put this item on the agenda for the General Affairs Council for adoption? If not, why not?

2. Does the Council agree that no progress can be made with the establishment of the above mentioned directive(s) as long as the EU Code of Conduct has not become a legally binding instrument, as foreseen by the draft Common Position?