IV. Developments in EU dual-use and arms trade controls

Chapter:

15. Dual-use and arms trade controls

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2017

Author(s):

Sibylle Bauer

The European Union is currently the only region with a common legal basis for controls on the export, brokering, transit and trans-shipment of dual-use goods, software and technology and, to a certain degree, also military items. These efforts have taken place under the Common Foreign and Security Policy; the European Community ‘pillars’ of the EU, as conceived by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty; and the areas of ‘exclusive’, ‘shared’ and ‘supporting’ EU competences, as conceived by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty.¹ This process has generated a range of different policy instruments as well as detailed implementation guidelines for arms exports. The key instruments are the EU arms embargoes, the EU Dual-use Regulation, the EU Common Position on Arms Exports, the Intra-Community Transfers Directive and the anti-Torture Regulation. Developments in EU arms embargoes are discussed in section II of this chapter. Discussions on and implementation of the EU Common Position and the Intra-Community Transfers Directive continued without any ground-breaking developments in 2016. However, major changes are under way in the area of dual-use trade controls. The Commission is moving ahead with the ongoing ‘recast’ of the Regulation, and states have also adopted a revised version of the anti-Torture Regulation.