|
|
|
Email this citationCIAO DATE: 08/05
The European Union Code of Conduct on Arms Exports: Improving the Annual Report
Sibylle Bauer and Mark Bromley
November 2004
Preface
Since 2001, the issues of terrorism and of the proliferation of mass destruction technologies have risen high on the international agenda. One obvious way to curb both is to shut off the supply of dangerous materials to unauthorized, or unreliable, users at source. In the past few years, this realization has prompted both a series of efforts to tighten up existing multilateral export control mechanisms, and the exploration of more novel approaches to 'supply-side' restraint. The urgency of political and popular concern about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has made the control of conventional weapons and technologies something of a Cinderella in this debate. In actuality, however, the use by terrorists of conventional or even purely civilian instruments has proved able to cause large-scale suffering and disruption: and conventional weapons remain the prime motor of the vast majority of armed conflicts around the globe. While hampering economic development and contributing to the abuse of human rights, these conflicts may also stoke the motives for proliferation of WMD.
A uniquely developed model for the control of conventional military exports is the Code of Conduct on Arms Exports introduced by the European Union (EU) as a political commitment in 1998, and now applicable to the EU's enlarged membership of 25 nations. Apart from establishing common criteria for the approval of exports, it has built-in transparency provisions—notably the publication of an Annual Report—that allow civil society as well as the official community to monitor individual states' performance. There are signs that it has created something like a virtuous circle of pressure for improvements of policy formulation and enforcement, both within the EU and among states preparing themselves for accession.
This Policy Paper presents the findings of a study on the Code of Conduct carried out by researchers from two different SIPRI project teams during 2004, with the kind support of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It focuses on the practicalities of data collection on exports covered by the EU Code in different member states, and on the rationale for and the impact of the type of data published in the EU's Annual Report according to Operative Provision 8 of the Code. It identifies a number of policy and practical issues that deserve consideration in the interests of perfecting the system, and which could be taken to heart both by the EU itself—currently preparing its first major internal review of the Code and its first report on the enlarged EU's performance—and by proponents of export control elsewhere.
