IV. Developments in the European Union’s dual-use and arms trade controls

Chapter:

14. Dual-use and arms trade controls

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2021

Author(s):

Andrea Edoardo Varisco

The European Union (EU) is currently the only regional organization with a common legal framework for controls on the export, brokering, transit and trans-shipment of dual-use items and also, to a certain extent, military items. The key elements of this legal framework are the EU’s arms embargoes, dual-use regulation, common position on arms exports, directive on intra-Community transfers, and anti-torture regulation.¹ Developments in EU arms embargoes are addressed in section II of this chapter. This section focuses on developments with regard to the dual-use regulation and the common position. During 2020 the EU reached a provisional agreement on the text of a new version of the dual-use regulation, thereby drawing to a close a long-running process of review and recast that began in 2011. Following a review of the common position that concluded in 2019, the EU also implemented measures to improve the level of transparency and accessibility of the EU annual report on arms exports.