Menu
The founding fathers of the EU had an ideal of a “peaceful, united and prosperous Europe”, the reason why successive treaties included as a main mission of the EU to preserve, strengthen and promote peace. 60 years later, it seems that lessons learned from World War II are already forgotten: over the last decade the red line preventing the EU to operate in military-related topics is being gradually blurred, and the EU budget is being increasingly used to finance arms-related activities under discreet but powerful lobbying of the arms and security industry.
As the European Community has no direct competence in the military area, the entry points have been the internal market and the ‘jobs and growth’ priority; as a result of the different initiatives taken, the current regulation and control of arms exports is being put into question, and the EU budget is being diverted from other priorities, with a specific focus on arms-related research:
The control of arms exports remains a national competence of EU Member States. At EU level, the latter agreed in 2008 a Common Position “defining common rules governing control of exports of military technology and equipment”. This text defines eight ethical criteria for the evaluation of an arms export license application. These criteria include the human rights situation in the country of destination as well as its involvement in armed conflict and its economic situation.
The Common Position is officially binding but in practice, there is no legal overview nor sanctions in case of breaches. In fact the Position leaves a lot of space for political interpretation. As a result, governments apply the eight criteria at random, depending on their economic, political and strategical interests. ENAAT wants a strict and responsible interpretation of the EU common position on arms exports.
EU Annual Reports on arms exports control
As a transparency and confidence building measure, each EU Member State is supposed to contribute to the EU annual report on arms exports control, handing in data on granted arms export licenses and arms transfers.
According to ENAAT analyses, these overviews are often too late and incomplete, raising many questions about the reliability of the data provided and on EU commitment to make arms export control effective. The EU annual reports on arms exports control are however one of the few official sources for analysing the European arms trade. This is the reason why ENAAT and CAAT set up an easy application to find a way through this overload of information.
The European Parliament adopted in 2015 an assessment report on the implementation of the Common Position, and should do so on a regular basis.
As the European Community has no direct competence in the military area, the entry points have been the internal market and the ‘jobs and growth’ priority; as a result of the different initiatives taken, the current regulation and control of arms exports is being put into question, and the EU budget is being diverted from other priorities, with a specific focus on arms-related research: