PRESS RELEASE

“European defence industry integration must not reverse hard-won UK standards of restraint governing arm exports, or signal a return to secrecy by government bureaucracies,” said arms campaigning groups today, commenting on the Framework Agreement between Europe’s six main arms producers, expected to be announced at the Farnborough Air Show on Monday 24 July.

Current involvement by the Indonesian army in communal violence in the Spice Islands underlines concerns that arms may go to conflict zones, or to human rights abusers, unless very high standards for the scrutiny of applications for export licenses are maintained. Parliamentarians and the public need enough information to be confident that their governments are achieving such high standards.

The Draft Agreement, ‘Measures to Facilitate the Restructuring and Operation of the European Defence Industry,’ which is expected to be broadly on the lines of a Letter of Intent, signed in 1998, between France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, aims to make movement of defence items between the Six easier, and to reduce and simplify procedures for licensing exports of jointly produced weaponry to other countries.

Countries involved in a joint venture will agree in advance, by consensus, a secret list of countries to which exports will be permitted. This creates a danger that the past record of a country will count for more than the present situation, which may be evolving rapidly.

A mechanism is likely to be created for the removal of a country from the list of permitted destinations. However, this is sure to require a lengthy consultation process among partners. The danger therefore exists that exports to sensitive destinations will continue while the Six agree on their response.

The export standards referred to in the Letter of Intent, and expected to be the touchstone of the Agreement, are those of the voluntary 1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports.  The Code, however, explicitly states that it provides minimum criteria, which should not prejudice higher national standards. A real concern therefore is that countries with high standards, such as Sweden, may have to accept less rigorous controls for export of joint venture defence goods.  Although agreement on acceptable export destinations is by consensus, officials admit that the weight of any national objection is likely to correspond to its level of industrial involvement in the project.

The Agreement is subject to ratification by Parliament. UK MPs should insist that ‘White Lists’ are made public.  Ideally, national parliaments should be allowed to scrutinise lists of permitted destinations before they are finalised.

There have been significant advances in recent years with the agreement of the EU Code on Arms Exports, and the publication by nearly all European arms exporters of annual reports providing much fuller information on arms consignments and their destinations.  It is therefore highly important that the integration of the European defence industry does not undermine these advances.

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